


The Love Thieves: Amour de Soi

by TrueMyth



Series: The Love Thieves [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, La Femme Nikita AU, Moira is not Canon!Moira, OFBB 2016, Olicity Fic Bang 2016, Slow Burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-12 00:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7912939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrueMyth/pseuds/TrueMyth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver Queen is a weapon in human form. Forged in the terrible fires of Lian Yu, honed to a razor's edge by ARGUS and the Bratva, he is death and destruction to everyone he meets. Section One directs him to topple corrupt governments, murder heinous warlords, or seduce valuable intel. He is their top operative and best trainer: able to size up an adversary or asset instantly and either put them to immediate use or eliminate them.</p><p>Felicity Smoak is just another new recruit. Pros: genius level intellect, amazing body, engaging personality, and computer skills that even Section fears. Cons: Stubborn as hell and relentlessly moral despite her record. She could be the best person he’s ever met. She’ll never survive training.</p><p>And in Section One, failure means death…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the OlicityFicBigBang 2016. Thank you to coffee-with-sunshine, scu11y22, bushlaboo, and arghhellopoe for all your help during the writing process.
> 
> My regular posting days will be Saturday, so look for chapter two then! Thank you for reading.

  
  
I actually made [this (and other) banners](http://truemyth.tumblr.com/post/125991707952/the-love-thieves-some-background-the-love) during the summer of 2015 when I first had the idea for this story.  
As my OFBB artist was unable to finish her totally awesome video trailer, I've broken out the old Photoshop.

  


Felicity Smoak dashes across the rain-slicked street, cursing under her breath for trusting someone who calls himself _CountV_ of all things. The initial intel checked out, but she waited at the meet-spot by the loading docks for over an hour, and the joker hadn't shown. Now it's after midnight in a horrible part of town, only two miles away from the yawning crater of last month’s earthquake. The small can of pepper spray jitters slightly beneath her fingers when she flexes them nervously.

She is never this trusting, but it has been so long since she had a solid lead on Cooper...

A shadow separates from the corner ahead. A flickering street lamp chases lightning across silver studs in the thick brow-ridge of the six-foot lump of muscle approaching her. Maybe if she asks nicely and smiles, he'll help her to her car two blocks away. Or maybe he'll tug her into the alley at her right and -- that isn't an option.

Felicity stops that line of thought and makes a quick calculation of velocity and distance. She's faster; the thug is still fifty yards away. She cuts into the alley and picks up her pace.

After one minute, 153 heartbeats, and 202 steps, she dives into the shadow of a ripe dumpster and tries not to breathe. She strains to hear his footsteps over the pulse of blood in her veins, and risks edging a single eye around the corner after pulling her dark hood low across her pale face.

A second later, the man strides past the mouth of the alley, not even glancing this way. His head bounces in time to the apparently frenetic music in his large headphones, and he pauses to shuffle a quick dance step. This guy is certainly unconcerned about his safety in this part of town, but his size and the flash of gunmetal under his leather jacket may lend him some confidence.

Felicity presses her forehead against the cold, scared metal of the dumpster and swears that any future meeting will be set for noon in a nice Starbucks.

She lets the man's footsteps fade before hustling away.

One half block to go towards the security of her Mini Cooper, but a scream of tires and an angry horn echoes off the black buildings and encourages her to stick to the shadows. She darts across this final street and into the alley again. Forcing herself to step quietly and slow her breathing, Felicity is halfway to Ash street before she hears it.

Someone is struggling.

A gurgle bubbles up from a dark doorway. The dull orange sodium lamp hiccups overhead, and she's pretty certain she doesn't want to see whatever is happening behind the crates stamped with “this end up” arrows pointing the wrong way.

Then a voice gasps, “Help.”

And she can't not. It's not in her to run and save herself.

So Felicity peeks around, staying low.

She's just in time to watch the comically large knife plunge down between the silver buttons of the cop's uniform. She's just in time to watch his cap with the large silver badge catch a light like a miner's lamp before it topples off the stunned man's head. She's just in time to catch the officer's eyes as the light behind them dims and his words make final sounds like “Nnnnugh” and “Rrrun.”

And it's probably because she is puzzling over those sounds that she misses the fact that the bald man in the bomber jacket with the bloody knife is turning towards her.

Felicity yelps, peddling backwards, and slips on something foul. She falls on her tailbone because both hands are busy catching the forearms of the mad man lunging at her.

The little red cylinder of mace rolls three feet away. It might as well be miles.

He will kill her. Oh god, this is how it ends.

No.

She bares her teeth.

Felicity goes wild. All pretense at self-defense from her Take Back the Night training flies from her mind in the frantic scramble. She wants to claw out his eyes. She twists her hips. Her head smacks into the cement ground. Her steel-toe boots connect with something flesh, and he grunts, but he is still pressing down. He is so heavy. Her biceps ache. The knife tip is inches from her left eye. The sharp point drops closer even as she arches away.

She manages to buck him off balance and grab at the handle, and they are both clinging to it while her black nails dig into the leather of his gloves. His dark eyes are bloodshot and desperate. His strength is flagging.

She needs to make trouble, be a bother. She will not give up. She stretches sideways, opening her jaw, ready to Mike Tyson his ear off if that's what it takes to keep on living.

And it works!

He jumps off her and starts running. Felicity gapes after him as he plants one foot on a pipe and makes a grab for the ladder on the building's side, scrambling into the iron web of a fire escape until he is only a blur of motion in the flash of blue and red lights.

She blinks. Processing the sirens now, she realizes that is why he ran.

The cops are here.

She is safe.

“Face on the ground! Now!” The commands ring out from behind her as Felicity stumbles to her feet. Her arms fly up in the automatic pose of _I surrender._

“Drop it!” A second cop barks. “Drop the weapon!”

Weapon?

The bloody knife falls in slow motion as the cops sweep in, guns still drawn and pinned on her.

“I didn't...” Felicity whispers, only to have the wind knocked from her as a female cop delivers a kick across her knees. Felicity falls on all fours, looking from the knife to the enraged officer shaking his head with a finger pressed to the murdered cop's neck.

“You have the right to remain fucking silent, bitch.” Felicity listens to the rest of her profanity ladened Miranda rights in shocked silence. Sticky cement presses against her cheek as the cop digs her knee into Felicity's back and tightens the handcuffs behind her.

“I didn't,” she gasps.

“What was that?” The cop's warm breath stirs the nape of her neck as she leans in to hear.

“I didn't kill anyone.”

A hacking sound proceeds a fat wad of spittle landing in front of Felicity's face.

“Tell it to the fucking judge, trash.”

* * *

_You have been found guilty of murder in the first degree. I am sentencing you to life in prison without the possibility of parole._

_Life in prison._

_You have been found guilty of murder in the first degree. Murder in the first degree._

_Guilty, guilty, guilty._

The words echo through Felicity's head on the first night after the trial, and every night that follows.

Thirty-two nights down. Only a whole life to go.

Felicity rolls over and faces the cinderblock wall, trying to block out the hall lights and find sleep. Mattress springs groan under the thin pad and scratchy blanket. Her cellmate snores blissfully above her, but Felicity will be lucky to get more than a few hours of rest.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you are near death, but that hasn't happened to her. Instead she reviews her life piece-by-piece while the tap drips slowly and Maude snorts and groans.

Felicity runs through the trial, through that night in the alley, through her meetings with her lawyer. It is all so wrong! How did it go so wrong?

She'd dropped out of MIT senior year, and most would call that a mistake. But it was clear no one was looking into Coop's death. He wouldn't kill himself. That was ridiculous. She'd told him she'd give herself up. Maybe this was all just the universe's way of putting this right. She hadn't gone to jail for the crime she _had_ committed, so now she rots away for something she couldn't do in a million years.

The only fingerprints on the knife were hers. No one had looked for the bald man. No one had seen anybody else in the alley. She couldn't even explain why she was in Starling City in the first place. Her own computer safeguards had betrayed her, scrubbing servers when the police forensics guys tried to access her systems and erasing all traces of CountV.

Felicity wipes her silent tears with the back of her sleeve and struggles to find a bright spot in this bleak future of nothing.

She jerks at a clang, distant and dull, still not use to all the night noises of the women's prison. When the rustle of footsteps reach her, she rolls over, curious. Felicity waits, listening to hear which cell they stop at. No one has come this late – early? – before.

Maude snores on, so maybe it is not strange after all.

They are still coming, at least three people. It sounds like they will pass her cell, so she shuts her eyes and pretends to sleep. Felicity has learned that curiosity is not a virtue on the inside.

The rustling stops and metal slides against metal. A key inserted into a lock, Felicity thinks, pleased to have figured it out. Her eyes snap open when she realizes that it is _her_ lock.

Four figures stand in front of her bunk, but none are any guards she knows. One is a man.

Wrong. This is wrong.

The door is open before she can get up. She presses her back into the corner, looking for something to use to defend herself, but there is nothing but a limp pillow.

“Wait. What do you want?” Felicity asks.

“Shush,” a brunette soothes, grabbing Felicity's right hand as her colleague takes the left. “It's over quick.”

But they are not holding her hands, they are pinning her wrists. The man grabs her ankles, and the last woman holds up a large needle.

“No!” Felicity pleads, “please!”

“Shush.”

“Huh, what's the noise?” Maude is awake.

“Go back to sleep,” the man barks.

The needle bites into Felicity's arm and the green-tinged liquid splashes ice through her veins.

“Shush,” the woman said.

“Wrong,” whimpered Felicity.

The blue hall lights dim.

Maude humphs above her, turning over.

Felicity starts to float, with a dark-haired snake woman drifting at her side.

“'Rooorg,” Felicity slurs. “I ddinn't.”

“Shussssssh,” says the snake. “Shusssssssh.”

* * *

White.

So bright.

This couldn't be the afterlife. She hurts too much.

Silence.

Her head is full of cotton balls, but her fingers feel linen and leather. She is strapped down.

Felicity's eyes snap open. White on white on white: the white round ceiling reflects the bright white lights set in white tiled walls. The dark strands of her hair streak across her field of vision as she tosses her head up, trying to sit, but leather straps hold her down. Her wrists are cuffed and bands cross her body -- chest, hip, and thigh -- holding her to a white metal hospital bed.

Oh, god.

Her breath rattles out a tattoo of terror as she traces the line of an IV, taped to her arm, running past her head. She tilts her head back, pressing her crown into soft pillows, but she can't see the IV’s source.

She screams then. Screams and kicks and begs and cries. No one comes.

A chime sounds behind her.

So tired.

Her arms are so heavy. It's too bright; her eyelids drift closed.

 

“Good morning.” The voice holds a smile. It's so nice, deep, and low.

It's morning?

The pressure is gone from her wrists, chest, hips, and legs.

There is an angel sitting at the foot of her bed.

Felicity blinks, but he is still there: a Roman statue in living flesh with eyes colder than the heart of a glacier. Felicity can't decide if he is better fit to Eros or Gabriel, but this angel is dressed in unrelenting black and his sandy hair is cropped close like a soldier. Ares or Lucifer is more like it.

The memories of her first waking in this horrible white room rush back, and Felicity rolls from the bed. She can’t contain the “Oouf” of air as she hits the hard, white floor, but she quickly spins onto her back, scuttling backwards until she hits a wall, reluctant to lose sight of this gorgeous, dangerous man.

“Who are you?” she demands.

“I'm not going to hurt you.”

Which is no answer at all.

He hasn't moved. He merely tilts his head and holds up empty hands, trying to placate her.

“What is this?” she tries again, her waving hands encompassing the circular white room with the bed in its center. There is a door behind him. The bed, the empty IV stand, and his chair are the only furniture. She needs information before she can act.

“You're not in prison any more.”

Well, obviously. He speaks slowly, as if to a child. If he really is the immortal incarnation of lust or God's judgement, then that's fine. But Felicity's head is slowly starting to clear, and as nice as his shoulders look in that fitted black suit jacket, he is flesh and blood and he can seriously stop patronizing her right about now.

He stands up slowly placing his palms flat on the mattress. His gentle smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “The world thinks you're dead.”

“What?”

“Suicide.” He nods, moving around the bed. So much for that barrier, but Felicity isn’t going to circle with him, not if it puts her back to the only door in the room. So she stays on the floor and tracks his movements as he closes in.

He smiles again, and his teeth are too perfect between his too perfect lips. “This is your funeral.” He passes her a 8 by 10 glossy print in black and white, still warm from the inside of his coat. Felicity shakes off that sensation and that of the brush of his fingertips across her hand. She focuses instead on the picture. A row of white headstones march across a lonely field.

“Mom.” Felicity's voice breaks as her fingers touch the small blond woman at the edge of the frame. It's the first time she's seen Donna Smoak in three years and her face is buried in a giant handkerchief. However, the black mini-skirt is a dead giveaway.

“Row 8, plot 30,” the angel says helpfully.

Felicity glares at him. He is unfazed, so perhaps she should work on her death gaze.

“We've decided to give you another chance,” he says. He smoothes his lapels as he stands straight and gestures to encompass more than this tiny room. “This is where you'll train. This is where you'll learn. After two years, if everything goes well, you'll work for us.” Again he smiles and again it doesn't reach his eyes.

He is too, too pretty. It's a shame he's insane. Play along, Felicity.

“Why me?” She presses her back to the cold tile wall and tries to look small.

“A woman with your looks and genius who can kill in cold blood...”

Why will no one fucking _believe_ her?

“I didn't!” Felicity screams. It’s too much. “I didn't kill anyone!”

He looks disappointed and unimpressed as she sobs. His sympathy has been feigned from the start. He turns towards the door. He's going to leave her alone in this cold hell.

Rage shoots through Felicity. Heat sweeps her from chest to cheek, and her fingers flex. She moves without thought, bare feet silent on the cold stone floor. Her hands close around the bar of the IV stand, swinging it in an arc aimed right at the back of his smug head.

He spins faster than a top, catching the metal pole with a twisting motion which breaks her grip in an instant. One hand answers her swinging arm while his leg hooks her knee and he brings them crashing to the floor in a controlled takedown.

Now his body presses into her from chest to thigh. The fresh mint of his breath washes over her face, and his blue eyes pin her mind as easily as his hands hold her forearms to the floor.

He is so close to her. Stubble dusts his perfect jawline, and a stray wisp of desire makes her want to lick it off. She bites back an hysterical giggle. He focuses on the action of her teeth and lower lip, and they both make eye contact again, but this time it's softer. When he starts to speak, she finds herself lifting her head to be closer to his deep voice, even though she can feel the rumble of his words through the vibrations of his chest, echoing through her bones.

“Felicity,” he tastes the syllables of her name on his lips with the smallest flicker of his tongue before he continues. “When you attack someone from behind, go for the kidneys. It disables and they can't fight back.” 

Smooth as sin, he rolls off her as his meaning sinks in, and she feels the warmth of a blush flood her cheeks even as the rest of her chills at the loss of his body.

He straightens his sleeve. “Consider that your first lesson.”

Struggling against humiliation and confusion, Felicity pushes up from the floor. “You can't keep me here.”

“We start tomorrow morning.” He is unconcerned and unmoved as he adds, “Five am.” The door is already half open, and there is only darkness beyond.

“Wait.” She’s really proud that the word comes out without a ‘please’ attached.

But Felicity is amazed when he actually stops. Again she refuses to beg. “Tell me your name.”

He tilts his head slightly, and her imagination puts a glint of humor in his eyes though his mouth stays flat. “You can call me Oliver.”

She flattens her feet to the cool ground as she looks up from her place on the floor. “What happens if I refuse, Oliver?” Because this is insane, and she can’t; she won't.

“Row 8, plot 30.” The clipped response punctuates by the slam of the heavy metal door.

* * *

Pressure locks hiss behind him as Oliver moves silently down the dark corridor and slips into the room next door.

A tall man with dark skin stands observing Felicity through the array of monitors that watch over Intake. His massive arms cross over the front of his black tee, and his mouth is set along a disapproving line. Oliver ignores the stance as he moves to a wall unit and taps a sequence into the keys, bringing up the relevant research files.

“It’s not right.” John breaks the silence after less than a minute.

Oliver’s lip quirk at the predictable nature of Section One’s master-at-arms. “It’s standard procedure.”

“I don’t care what this girl scores on an IQ test; she’s not Section material. Her adrenaline is spiked to hell and back even with all that crap they pumped into her. She’s not a fighter. Who the hell approved her recruitment?”

“Doesn’t matter now.” Oliver refuses to turn and engage with the man he silently agrees with. Instead he studies his new trainee closely.

Felicity has drawn into herself, her narrow arms wrapped around her knees, her tar-black head resting on top of them. Under the thin white tank top, a shuttering ripple moves down the fragile curve of her spine. She is crying. Perhaps her facade of confidence was a fluke.

“Of course it matters!” John invades his peripheral vision. “I’d like to crack open their head and see what stupid looks like.”

Oliver smirks.

John continues, “Look at her, man. How are we gonna teach a little goth pixie to march to Section’s drum?”

“Her attack wasn’t too bad,” Oliver offers. “Only ten percent of recruits use the pole.”

John snorts. “Yeah, because most recruits are idiots.”

“I take it you were one of the ten percent?”

“Son, I threw the _bed_.”

Oliver looks fully at the older man and only years of training keeps the surprise from his voice. “It’s bolted down.”

“Well, yeah. Now.”

Oliver inclines his head in new respect.

“But look,” John pulls up a video on a sub-screen, rewinding to the point of Felicity’s attack. “She’s swinging a wide arc at the top of your head. At best, that would disorient for a few seconds. This girl has no combat sense at all.”

Oliver counters with the file he’s been examining: crime scene photographs saturated with red. “She gutted a trained man almost twice her size.”

John’s eyes dance in disbelief between the file and the monitor feed. John’s thoughts play across his face until his lips tighten and his eyes dart darkly toward Oliver.

Oliver nods slightly enough to go unnoticed on any security feed, but he silently confirms John’s conclusions. Oliver follows it with a casual shrug, shutting down the case history files and bringing up the initial physical profile.

“You’ll be taking charge of Felicity’s combat training.”

John balks. “You’re normally a lot more hands-on with your new material.”

Oliver meets his gaze calmly until John breaks the contact and rubs his hand over his eyes and forehead. “Okay,” he agrees wearily, “what does she need?”

“Begin with self-defense and strength-training.” As he speaks, Oliver activates John’s clearance on the relevant files. “Build up her reflexes, hone her agility. Teach her the targets for subduing a larger opponent.”

John snorts at the last instruction. “All things covered in the basic group lessons.”

“From which the low performers are culled within a month.”

John stands silent as Oliver methodically closes all subsidiary windows until Felicity’s hunched body fills the wall of monitors. Oliver’s face betrays no emotions.

“You really think she can hack it here?” John asks.

Oliver closes his eyes for the space of one breath before looking back over his shoulder at the other man. “Help her, John. Help her survive.”

The request set John back on his heels. He nods his acquiescence, gaze falling on the screen with new wonder, but his questions remain unspoken as he leaves the room. Before the door falls shut, he sticks his head back in.

“Oliver?”

“Yes?”

“I was in the field when you were brought in. Heard you made it into the corridor. Only one to ever get that far.”

“Yes.”

“How did you do it? Did you use the pole?”

“No.”

“Then how —”

“— I struck from behind and snapped the trainer’s neck.”

“Shit,” John breaths.

“He got sloppy.”

“Right. Forget I asked.”

Oliver nods absently, already focusing back on Felicity as the door seals shut behind John.

All this time, Felicity has been curled in a ball, occasionally shaking, but she is still now, her head raised an inch above her knees. Slowly, she crawls to the side wall and the faint outline of an access panel. With greater speed and a glance towards the obvious camera, Felicity darts to the bed and works free the metal needle of the I.V. She makes short work of the small screws and begins to manipulate the electronics behind the wall.

Oliver finally lets loose the smile he’s fought since she first opened her eyes as he slowly cheers her on. He knows that she can not overcome the guards outside, can not access sensitive systems from the closed loop of Intake, but this is a side he always looks for and so rarely finds.

It takes one to know one, but Felicity Smoak is a survivor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity is introduced to the reality of life in Section One.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm honestly overwhelmed by the reaction to my first chapter. This fic idea has been in my brain for over a year, and I'm thrilled to see such enthusiasm for it. Thanks you so much!
> 
> As it says in the tags, please be aware that my "Moira" is not the Moira Queen of canon. That is to say, she is not Oliver's mother.

Her right arm still aches from the twisting pressure applied last night by the hall guard. Felicity had been so pleased when she hacked through the cell lock with the IV needle and the door clicked open, but her pride was short lived. Further prodding quickly determined the room’s system is on a closed loop. No escape that way.

So now she shrugs on the plain black shirt that was brought with her morning meal and waits for Oliver cross-legged on the mattress she pulled onto the floor.

No doubt it is exactly five a.m. when he walks through the door, well-rested and still sinfully handsome.

“Good morning.”

Felicity wishes she had thought to stand, because bouncing to her feet seems immature in the face of his elegance and she never learned the trick of gliding to your feet like a ballerina. She’s begged out of ballet at five in favor of computer class and never felt the loss until now.

Which makes her angry. After all, this Oliver has basically kidnapped her and she really shouldn’t care what he thinks of her. 

She bounces up in her sneakers and sneers. “What’s good about it?”

Oliver considers with a tilt of his head. “Well, we aren’t dead.”

“I might as well be, with your ‘row 8, plot 30’ talk.” She punctuates the air with finger quotes.

“That would be a shame.”

His voice remains the same flat tone, his lips the same even keel, but she feels his sincerity echo to her core and can only blink.

Oliver smiles slightly and sweeps his arm towards the door. “How about a tour?”

She follows half a pace behind him into the quiet corridors from last night. The lights are brighter now, suggesting some form of diurnal cycle to simulate day and ease the circadian rhythms of the people who live here. Just how deep underground are they? Felicity trails her fingers across rough stone walls and looks up through several stories of steel mesh catwalks.

“How many people live here?”

Oliver shakes his head slightly, turning into a wider corridor. A few people emerge from one room and walk past them, acknowledging Oliver with a respectful nod. He stops at a touch screen in the wall and activates an elevator. They wait for a large man with a baleful gaze to disembark and move passed before entering the car.

“Are they all from prison, too?” she whispers this time though her voice squeaks a bit at the end.

It’s a definite smile on his lips this time, and her heart jumps a short pitter-pat at the actual twinkle in his eyes. Not that he answers before she blurts out again.

“Who pays for this? Is this a 4T screen?” Felicity’s fingers itch to play over the elevator’s high-end terminal.

Oliver draws breath, as she continues, “Why would you even need that in an elevator? Are they running scans on us now? Is this some kind of fail-safe access point? This must be the main elevator then. Would it, like, shock me if I touched it? I really want to touch it —“

“— Felicity.” The word dams the stream of her thoughts. “Do you always talk so much?”

“Only when I’m nervous. Or excited.”

His left brow rises slightly.

“Or if I can’t stand the silence.”

Oliver glances away as the elevator begins to slow, and she’s sure he’s calculating all the ways that this is a mistake. Sure enough, he grumbles in a forbidding tone, “That will have to change.”

Felicity opens her mouth to tell him just what she thinks of _that_ , and then lets it hang slightly limp as she takes in the scene beyond the elevator doors.

Cavernous walls encircle an area at least one football field wide and several stories high. The rough golden stone walls are pierced throughout with industrial steel girders, supporting more mesh catwalks around the perimeter, allowing access to mysterious corridors, while glass and granite slabs subdivide room-sized cubicles. Through this space, countless people move like dark drones in a humming hive, carrying disks and drives and weapons, some deep in conversation, others oblivious to the activity around them. Grunts and thumps tumble from a room to the right, and Felicity spies a man in some kind of ninja pajamas being tossed to the blue mat floor by a girl her own size. Across the room, a dark-skinned man with arms like tree-trunks packs a gun she’s pretty sure should be mounted on a tank into a large case and sends it off with three others.

Yet these are all secondary distractions from the feature at the center of the chamber. A raised platform of silver metal and frosted glass holds the nerve center of the computer system, while lights from below indicate access to the server farm. At least six work stations are currently in use, code flying over screens with a computational speed that makes her salivate. She closes her mouth self-consciously, and watches a tall young man with a modest afro snap at one of the technicians and push him out of the way to dive into the breach himself. The nearby screens display a large amount of red, which Felicity assumed is _not good_ , but that guy would learn to think twice before he booted her off her machine.

Above all this bustle, one side of the room is free from catwalks or cacophony. Instead, a full wall of windows, lightly-tinted and tilted downward, presses into the space. At this distance, she can only make out the lights of a few machines on the back wall, silhouetting the solitary figure in a dark suit. Not ominous at all.

“This is the Hub,” says Oliver.

“Right,” Felicity returns, demonstrating that she too can play the game of understatement.

“This way.” Oliver indicates a side passage, below the ominous glass bird’s nest.

“Where am I going?”

“To meet your new mother.”

“So what does that make you?”

Oliver’s smile does not reach his eyes this time, as he enters a code into the door panel. “Wait here.”

As infuriating as his terse responses are, Felicity misses him even before his trim figure turns the corner. He is a glimmer of reliability in this strange new world. She meditates on that a moment too long, and jumps when the door slides open.

The room beyond is expansive. Sandstone walls take on a warm glow under crafted glass sconces and a sparkling crystal chandelier suspended over a comfortable grouping of plush and elegant furniture. A large spray of creamy crocus flowers perfume the air as Felicity moves deeper into the well-appointed space. Additional soft light spills through several doorways, highlighting a curving staircase leading to a high balcony, but she is drawn to an incongruous workspace on a wide wooden desk.

The top-of-the-line monitor and ergonomic keyboard only share a price tag with the otherwise luddite room. Even more surprising is the data displayed. Pictures of Felicity, in the white room and in prison orange, run down one side while measurements and narrative analysis fills the rest. _Genius level I.Q._ , it proclaims. _College Dropout. Dean’s List. Banned from Vegas Bellagio. Prone to infatuation. Idealistic. Brave. Rebellious. First-degree murder. Abandonment issues. Dark web expertise…_ Felicity wastes precious seconds skimming the psychological vivisection of her life before letting her fingers answer the itch that started in the elevator with Oliver.

Five seconds and she is probing the system protocols, stripping away the simple firewall, and bouncing against the network once before she realizes that this system is closed. As of — her fingers fly — three minutes ago, this system was disconnected from the outside servers. That means there has to be a hard-wire connection inside the room, and Felicity can find it easily by back-tracing the bundle of cables, but she hesitates to pull away, pulling up the file database which held her information and squinting at the coded file names. Bringing up the minimized executable, she enters a five letter search term and jumps several inches when a voice rings down from the top of a sweeping staircase.

“They seem to think you have potential.”

“Holy frack!”

The woman standing on the balcony rests a casual hand on the railing and arches a fine blond brow at Felicity. When she begins to move down the stairs, her well-tailored, dark grey suit accentuates the grace of her movements and her heels sound a precise clip of composed assurance.

What had she said? Potential? “Potential for what?” Felicity asks, “Who's they? Who are you?”

“I am Moira. They are Section One.” She stops inches in front of Felicity, regarding her coolly down her patrician nose. Felicity longs for heels of her own to put herself on eye-level. Instead, Felicity forces herself to stare back without blinking, summoning the armor of a practiced sneer. Unfazed, Moira continues, “They own you now.”

Felicity blinks and says the first thing that comes to mind. “I didn't know I was for sale.”

A genuine smile flashes across Moira’s face, and Felicity quells the flutter of pride in her breast. This woman is so different from Donna Smoak, but she now understands what Oliver meant: she wants to please Moira, to impress her, to be worthy of this woman, even though she knows that she is in a vulnerable state and being manipulated.

“Choice is an illusion more often than not, Felicity. True independence only comes when you identify the rules of the game and make them work for you.”

“And you’re going to teach me the rules of Section One?” As Moira turns towards a nook near the desk, Felicity hurriedly returns the computer screen to its earlier state.

“Oh, no,” Moira responds. “We have much more important things to discuss today.”

Curiosity quickens her steps towards Moira.

“Please, sit down,” Moira says, gesturing to a small vanity lit with bright, reassessed lighting. Cut glass bottles of doubtlessly expensive perfume are aligned like soldiers on the polished woods surface, as if doing battle with a fan of lipstick and eyeshadow over the prize of a matching set of engraved silver brushes.

Felicity sits, gripping the edge of the stool and crushing the soft velvet to control her uncertainty. In the beveled mirror, she sees herself clearly for the first time in months: the sharp lines of her face, honed on a prison diet; the dark circles beneath her eyes, bruised by sleepless nights; the state-issued glasses, strange after years of contact-wear; and the tar-black hair with browning roots, such an obvious declaration of rebellious conformity.

“You’d do well as a blonde.”

Felicity jerks at the words, a momentary flash of Donna Smoak superimposes over Moira. She remembers her mother’s exultations to wear more blush, to try contacts, and the seduction of a rainbow of nail varnish. She turns towards Moira, a protest on her lips.

“We’ll correct your eyes first,” Moira continues before Felicity can get the words out.

She’d longed for lasik surgery ever since high school, but the thought of that choice being made _for_ her makes her argue like a sullen teen.

“My eyes are _fine_.” 

Moira catches her cheek with gentle hand before she can turn away. “Then look at yourself. Admire yourself.”

At first Felicity can only raise her chin in defiance of this teasing, but the action causes the vanity lights to glint across her blue eyes as they flicker to Moira’s face and find compassion there.

Moira smiles. “You’re beautiful, Felicity. See your beauty.”

Tension rolls off of Felicity’s back, relaxing the line of her shoulders. She wants to believe Moira’s words, wants to believe the glittering facade of this warm room and the kind words from this powerful woman. Felicity is powerful, too. She is beautiful, and she knows how to change herself to affect change in others. The bones of her face are symmetrical and fine, her eyes spark with intelligence, and her hair is soft and smooth. Felicity sits straighter calculating the truths of her situation as Moira’s hypnotic voice weaves an unknowing ladder from a hoped for snare.

“You can learn to shoot, you can learn to fight,” Moria proclaims, “but there's no weapon as powerful as your femininity.” Felicity lets her eyes close at this, to hide the lie. Her wiles are as fierce as any Vegas girl, after all, but her greatest weapon will always be her mind.

This would not be as easy as hacking through a few doors and running for the cops, like she tried last night. If the huge organization outside is any indication, Section One is obviously more powerful than that. She’ll find another way. She’ll play the long game, change her face, learn their ways, and, when the time is right, Felicity will win.

* * *

“Again!” John barks at the row of operatives in front of him.

Felicity keeps her eyes closed, trying to find the natural rhythm of the fighting forms. Something catches her left foot and she crashes to the mat. John glares down at her.

“This isn’t a meditation, Barbie. Keep your eyes open.”

Snickers skitter through the line, and Felicity bites her lip, forgoing John’s offered hand to kip up into a standing position. At least she’s mastered that.

“The rest of you, hit the showers. Felicity, you’re with me.” John stalks towards the back wall of the practice chamber where the weapons are kept, expecting her quick compliance.

“The forms are a kind of meditation. Like TaiChi.”

He smirks as he pulls down two pairs of escrima sticks. “Meditation won’t save your life in the field,” he argues. “Or those of your teammates. We rely on each other to stay sharp and have our backs.” In a quick move, at odds with his size, John tosses two sticks across the three feet between them and begins swinging his own pair: one twirling in defense, the second coming straight for her head.

Felicity snatches the sticks in midair and forms a classic x-shaped block with the pair, halting John’s downwards swing an inch from her newly blond head. The force of his blow strains the arm muscles she’s developed in the past two months, but she holds him, bending her legs to add their force as she pushes him off.

“Watch your center of gravity.”

That’s her only warning before he sweeps his free stick at her right thigh. She falls into a series of blocks by reflex, bouncing on her feet and using her size and speed she’s been trained. She can’t help but smile when she sees a bead of sweat begin to roll down John’s face.

“Tired?”

A second too late, Felicity realizes that he’s been maneuvering her all this time, and her back crashes into a wall. A sharp strike to her wrist sends one of her sticks clattering while he pins another to the wall.

“What do you do now, Felicity?”

There’s a knife on the wall a few inches from her. The sick thing is, she bets that’s what he wants her to go for. They’ve been drilling them from day one to use every advantage; win at any cost. Murder and maiming is expected. So she feigns a struggle with her pinned arm and creeps her fingers along the wall, watching John’s eyes go soft with encouragement.

Then she drives her knee hard into his unprotected groin.

With a grunt, John falls to the ground.

Felicity squats next to him with a grin. It’s not that she is _happy_ to see him in pain. Not really. But that did feel damn good, and she can’t resist the teasing, “Did you forget to watch your center of gravity, John?”

He nods, accepting the razzing with good humor, while he reaches over towards her offered hand, then course corrects, pushing gently on her knee so that she topples onto her ass, too.

“Like knocking over a feather,” he observes, laughing. His eyes catch something over her shoulder, and he stills.

A quick glance confirms that Oliver is watching them from a nearby archway. Just like he has everyday while she trains with John or suffers through tech drills with Curtis that insult her intelligence. Beyond his morning check-ins, Oliver doesn’t talk to her at all.

She turns back to John and rolls her eyes.

“Why didn’t you go for the knife, Felicity?”

“I found another way.” Sure, she sounds stubborn, but it is true.

“You didn’t want to hurt me —” He shifts slightly, crossing his legs in front of his body with self-deprecating protection, “permanently, anyway.”

“I know what this place is. I know what you want me to do, but I’m not a killer, John.”

“Don’t say that, Felicity.” He leans in to whisper in her ear. “We’re making cuts again. I’m really supposed to write that shit down, and you’ll be gone.”

Felicity blinks. “Gone?”

John nods, his eyes boring into her as if trying to add weight to the word.

The first round of cuts had happened after only one week of training. The next morning, five of her starting class had been missing with not a word said about them. Transfers, that’s what she’d let herself believe. Oliver’s graveyard picture was just a scare tactic. Right?

John’s eyes say, “no.”

“Oh,” Felicity says.

“Yeah,” John nods again. “Yeah. So, do me a favor? Step up your game. Next time, go for the knife and keep your eyes wide open.”

“So there will be a next time?”

John grins as he helps her stand. “Only if you get over to weight training and give me three circuits.”

Felicity groans already feeling the burn in her muscles, but she returns her sticks to John with a nod.

Before she can leave, John says, “Oliver was right: you’re a survivor.”

Her head jerks towards the now-vacant hallway. “He said that?”

“Go get sweating, Barbie.”

“I’m not _that_ blond, John!”

“Mm-hum.”

Felicity grumbles half-heartedly on the way to the gym, while a part of her mind churns over the revelations of the past half hour. What the hell has she gotten herself into?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One year into her training, a mission gone wrong brings Felicity and Oliver into conflict (and close quarters).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm so flattered by the lovely Tumblr rec's and all your comments here. It's so exciting to see this story resonate with old Nikita and LFN fans, as well as Olicity fans with no prior knowledge of Nikita. Feel free to contact me on Tumblr or Twitter; my handle is the same.
> 
>   
>   
> I dusted off my Photoshop to create a little banner. You may also  
> be interested in [a series of Tumblr posts](http://truemyth.tumblr.com/post/125991707952/the-love-thieves-some-background-the-love) I made back in the summer  
> of 2015 when this story idea first struck.

It’s night in Section, and even the Hub is quiet save for the sound of Felicity’s fist hitting the practice dummy. She still doesn’t understand why these things are made out of wood, but she’s gotten use to the pain and knows how to hold her fist for maximum impact and minimum personal damage.

That’s something she never thought about before Section, but it’s a truth: when you damage others, hand to hand, you are choosing to damage yourself, too. Your knuckles hit their bones, your feet strike their tensed muscles, and the real skill is managing to make the angle and surface area and velocity of the strike go in your favor. It’s really just simple physics.

So she strikes out again, changing up the strike for a rounded fall that brings her elbow down with the full force of her body against the bad guy. She thinks of all her opponents as bad guys now. It helped a little bit. Enough to improve her rankings and her survival.

A sudden alert sounds from the center hub and activity picks up across the way in MedBay. Bad news.

Felicity crosses for a better view of the entrance ramp in time to hear the pressure sealed main door hiss open. 

There’d been a big mission tonight. John and even Curtis had gone into the field for support.

Oliver had lead the team.

Felicity grips the metal railing that divides the space as two — no three — stretchers emerge from the long hallway to the outside. John walks with one, his head lowered, to talk to the man… she can’t see who it is.

A tightness settles in her chest, as Brian pushes out a large black bag on a fourth cart.

How many had gone on this mission? Where was… Curtis staggers out a step behind Brian. He teeters on his stilt-like legs and seems to be piloting from memory as he moves towards his beloved computers. Behind him comes another black bag, and another, and another. God. This was a massacre!

Felicity jumps over the railing and is reaching for Curtis with a single question on her lips when Oliver finally appears under the dark archway. His black tactical vest hangs open over a tight black undershirt. The white bandage on his left arm is a stark contrast to the black. His face is… bitter. The calm serenity he always wears has been stripped away. As he looks up at Operation’s control room windows, his eyes seem to flash in the minimal light, and Felicity follows his gaze with concern. If Operation sees him looking like that, with, well, _murder_ in his eyes… but the room is dark and there are no figures beyond the glass.

Maybe that’s worse. Shouldn’t the head of Section be around after a mission has gone so wrong?

Whether it is the man or the office Oliver is raging against, he has not stopped his progress, marching straight from Transport towards the center of Section, and Felicity is right in his way. She could hide, take advantage of his distraction and move aside into the shadows, but his face is so drawn and wracked with pain, so she steps into the light.

“Oliver.”

He doesn’t seem to hear her, his eyes fixed on Operation’s perch, until he is almost on top of her and she reaches out a hand, her fingers brushing the soft hairs of his forearm.

“Oliver!”

He blinks and recognition dawns. “Felicity.” His eyes sweep her from head to toe, and his brow furrows, “What are you wearing?” The question is almost an accusation.

She looks down at her workout clothes, the bright pink sides of the spandex top matching a small headband. Felicity shrugs and points a thumb towards the exercise chamber. “I was just…”

“Get some sleep.” 

He takes a step forward, and she sees that his hands are clenched in fists. Not good.

“No.” She steps fully into his path and puts her hand on his chest. Oh god, it’s rock hard, and she’s happy he’s looking down at her with irritated surprise because she likely has _no chance_ of stopping this man. She can’t drop her hand though. The thin cotton of his black T-shirt is slightly damp and molded to the muscles of his pectorals, and his warmth is radiating into her, and she _feels_ the huff of his breath as he focuses the full weight of his concentration upon her.

“What do you mean, ‘no?’”

“You can’t talk to Operations like this.”

“Like what?” His confusion is overwhelming his irritation, making him just a little bit malleable, so she rests her other hand on his bicep — oh my! _Not the time!_ — and attempts to tug him into the shadows of the gym.

“You’re obviously angry, and you probably have all kinds of adrenaline pumping through your system right now.”

His eyes narrow. “I need to report.” Oliver carefully places his big, warm hands on her bare shoulders and attempts to set her out of the way. Felicity is a little surprised that he doesn’t pat her on the head.

“You want to hurt him.” She dances around him, back into his path, refusing to be patronized. “You can’t go in there like that. He’ll see it.”

“You don’t understand, Felicity,” Oliver growls, looming over her.

“Then tell me!” She yells back. Unconcerned with the way his body physically dominates hers, she stands straight, bringing their faces within an inch of each other so that he can _see_ just how serious she is.

For a second, she is sure that he is going to storm past her in disgust. She’s not sure what stops him, but he is suddenly hustling her back into the shadows of a nearby enclosure, the intensity of his anger somehow turned inward so that the muscles of his forearms twitch under her palm, and he is none-too-gentle when her back connects with a cold, metal wall.

His voice is a hiss in her ear, his breath hot against her sweat-damp neck, “The intel was all wrong. Security strength was three-times reported, and our mobile base was hit seconds after we came under fire in-bound.”

He eases back slightly and his eyes search hers, as if willing her to understand the implications.

“They knew you were coming.”

He nods.

“There’s a mole?”

Oliver pushes back from her, physically repelled by the implication, though he must have been thinking it himself.

“Oliver…”

He rounds on her again, forearms surrounding her head as his eyes arrest her gaze. “Section One is the most covert anti-terrorist group on the planet.” His syllables have bite as he recites the mission statement with absolute conviction and a not insignificant amount of bitterness. “It’s our job to catch the criminals and terrorists that no one else can get. We don’t. Make. Mistakes.”

Felicity’s head is reeling. After a year of Oliver watching her from the shadows, briefly meeting to discuss her performance statistics, seeming indifferent to her most of the time, even while her body seems keyed to his in a way that sends a shiver down her spine each time he enters the room, she now has the full force of his focus bearing down upon her, and it is not even this most important thing because she can hear the fracture of doubt within the rock of his conviction. He’s built his belief system on Section’s integrity, and she knows from her own experience what a mess of quicksand that really is.

So she looks up into those beautiful eyes, breathes in the scent of him, and offers him the offending truth. “And yet…”

His eyes fall closed, but her words have hit their mark. He nods and a familiar stillness washes over him. She can feel him withdrawing into himself as he straightens, no longer looming, no longer caging her in. His eyes open, and he smiles down at her with the same false smile that she hated when they first met.

This is the Oliver she’s known; this is the spy who never truly connects. Somehow, Felicity has always known this is _not_ who Oliver really is.

“So what’s next?” Felicity asks.

“We find the mole.”

“Oh, sure. But what do we do _after_ breakfast?”

Standing this close — he hasn’t actually moved back, and _god_ she can actually feel the warmth radiating from his body — Felicity doesn’t miss the quick uptick at the corner of Oliver’s mouth, and she grins back at him.

“ _You_ actually need to get some sleep first,” says Oliver.

“You’re not coming to sleep with me?” Felicity’s head collides with wall behind her before the last word is out, turning it into a countdown. “Three - two - one.” She looks up at his now full smile and implores, “I really am getting better at that.”

Humor still in his voice, Oliver wisely ignores her innuendo and continues, “Your field simulation is coming up soon.”

Felicity nods, “That’s why I was practicing,” she indicates her workout clothes again and tries not to read anything into the way Oliver’s gaze seems to linger over her. “But I can still help. How many knew about the mission?”

“What’s standard ops?” Oliver quizzes back. Oh great, _now_ he is deciding to play instructor?

Felicity rolls her eyes. “Mission ops remain classified to Operations, Mission leader, and Intel until it goes live. After the initial briefing, all operatives are on Standby until launch, at which point — wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am — Everyone is in the field and the mission is executed.” She simpers playfully at him, “Did I miss anything, professor?”

He coughs. “No.”

“So…” Felicity muses, “If this mission was by the book,” she pauses for Oliver’s nod. “Then either someone has figured out how to send encrypted messages through Section’s systems or Operations or Intel —”

“— No,” Oliver interrupts.

“But…”

“This wasn’t Operations, and Curtis had full control of mission data. He’s loyal.”

“Why are you so sure…?”

“Felicity.” Just her name, but it is as final as a coffin nail driven home.

“Okay,” she agrees. “Okay. Encrypted messages.” Realization rushes over her, and she claps her hands with glee. “I can help you!”

“How?” He’s back to glowering at her.

His moods are so mercurial that Felicity can’t help imagining smiling Oliver as a rare butterfly that needs to be pinned down to be preserved. Of course, _pinning down_ Oliver is not the kind of thing she should be thinking about now.

“System encryption. Data retrieval.” His face remains blank. “Electronic intel gathering?” She wiggles her fingers in his stoic face. “Come _on_! You know my education and programing scores. I could find those messages in my _sleep_. Okay, not in my sleep. It’s a figure of speech. One hand behind my back? That’s better right? And actually hard, if you think about it.”

Oliver steps back. A shadow falls over his face, making him even more inscrutable. “I’ll have Curtis take a look.”

And that’s just, “ERrraah!” All the frustration of the past year bursts forth from Felicity as she moves to cut off his retreat and points her finger at his stupidly muscular chest. “That right there! What is wrong with you people? I’ve played by your rules; I’ve learned to shoot, fight, and scale 30 foot walls. I can pick a lock with a bobby pin, and that’s a lot harder than it looks in the movies, and it’s all so _stupid_! I’m one of the best hackers in the world, Oliver: a tech wizard, a masterful maverick at the keyboard.” Her arm waves behind her, where she knows Curtis’s domain glows with cool blue lights. “I should be _there_. Curtis kicked me out of his computer training because I’m _better_ then him at this stuff.”

She is standing in front of Oliver as he glares down his body to where she now realizes her finger presses against his solar plexus. She casually withdraws the digit, flexing the hand as it returns to her side, but glares right back up at him and then cocks an eyebrow in challenge.

“You haven’t been cleared for that kind of access to the system.”

“Why _not_?”

Oliver sighs and glances over her shoulder as if searching for something to make the unreasonable reasonable. “Your psych eval,” he admits. “With your previous use of the internet to destabilize systems…”

“Wait. You don’t trust me?”

“Your record —”

“You don’t _trust_ me?”

Oliver remains silent.

“You’re teaching me to go out and kill, and break-and-enter, and lie to strangers, and do all these spy things, and _to kill_ , but you don’t _trust_ me not to crash your servers out of some kind of anarchist _spite?!_ ”

She’s so mad. Never before has she so wished for superpowers so that her eyes could shoot laser-beams and burn into his placid blue gaze as he calmly watches her rant. The rest of her diatribe chokes in her throat, and all she can do is glare. And then he says the stupidest thing ever.

“ _I_ trust you, Felicity.” While her mind reels from that, he continues, “ _Section_ is not sure of your loyalties.”

Her mouth is hanging open, and she’s actually a bit speechless.

“Once you’re through training, we’ll be sure to use your technical abilities. They will be an asset in the field. For now, we can’t afford any irregularities on your record.”

“Why?” she manages to squeeze out.

His brows furrow as if from a painful glare. “Just do the job, Felicity.”

He begins to walk past her, and she sees another year of the same stretching out before her: Oliver watching from a cold distance as she’s taught exactly where to strike with a knife to kill quickly and quietly while she chokes down bile.

“I can’t.” She doesn’t whine; she doesn’t yell. “I can’t do what they want me to do.”

He’s watching her, backlit by the lights of the Hub and hard to read, but she meets him head on.

“I can’t kill people.”

Oliver steps into her space again, moving silently, his face still hard as stone. “The moment I believe that, Felicity: you’re canceled.”

And then he is gone, disappearing like a ghost, leaving her with the same cold chill down her spine.

He’s wrong. She can find another way, to play by their rules and still stay true to herself. 

And she’ll start with this mole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter four will be up next Saturday and contains a scene I long wished to write/read/see on the show. I'll see you then! :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver takes a more active interest in Felicity’s training, but so do the higher-ups in Section.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A week passes before she hears from Oliver again. Brian stops by her bunk with a sneer for her hard-won fern — as if trying to bring a little color and life to Section is a pitiable thing — and gives her a crisp piece of ecru card-stock.

Oliver’s black block-letters proclaim, **ROOM G-34. 0900. WEAR LOOSE CLOTHES.**

Felicity turns the note over in her hands but there are no other clues, and it is six o’clock now. She has to hack into the secondary shell to pull up the base schematic, which — let’s be honest — is more about the challenge of accessing an unmonitored terminal than the actual coding at this point, especially with Brian’s access codes. Brian won’t be flagged for looking at a map, and there will be no trace of her in the system.

She really doesn’t want to know who he was thinking about when he made his password 38-24-32.

Still, G-34 is several levels below her dormitory, and she tugs her leather coat defensively down over a soft T-shirt dress as she arrives three minutes late. Since Oliver specified the type of clothing needed, she is perfectly justified in taking ten… twenty… okay, thirty minutes to find the right outfit.

The door opens to her code and reveals a metal cat-walk ringing the top of a narrow rectangle, at least a story deep. A spiral staircase descends at the midpoint of the shorter wall, and Oliver is moving below, for once not waiting to step dramatically out of the shadows. 

As Felicity clatters down the steps, she gets a better look at a small table in the back of the room holding a huge dark chest with cryptic stamps and leather straps. It is still less mysterious than Oliver in his tailored suit jacket and crisp white shirt as he waits patiently for her. 

“You’re late.” 

Okay, so not patient then.

She shrugs, falling back on her old bravado and stifling the impulse to blurt out an excuse.

Over his shoulder she makes the outline of a set of targets, so she’s not surprised at his next words.

“It’s time you learned to shoot.”

“I’ve been doing fine,” she snaps. Would it kill him to start a conversation with a salutation?

“Middle of the road is not fine, Felicity. You’ve been skating by, doing just enough to —” His blue eyes never waver like his words. “It’s been a year,” he concludes and there’s a deeper meaning there, but, god, has she really been here a year?

“If you don’t excel, you’ll be canceled,” he continued.

“What am I, _Firefly_?”

Now he simply blinks, so she adds, “Canceled before its time?”

But Oliver only sighs and turns towards the dark wooden trunk, shrugging out of his jacket.

“You’re really going to teach me? I thought you liked to delegate.” She mutters, “At least with me.” Others talk about his ‘personal touch’ with the recruits, the way he mentored, cajoled, or _seduced_. That last one is always said with a sigh. Felicity assumes he’d already given up on her.

But now he’s standing there in his shirtsleeves, with his hand outstretched, the soft curve of his palm cradling the space above as if forming a vacuum, drawing her hand towards him.

His fingers are both warm and cool when they touch. His callouses spark along the surface of her skin, and the warmth wins out. His thumb sweeps across her knuckles, capturing her attention as much as her physical hand and holding both close.

“I’m surprised you haven’t drilled yourself to the top of the class. The last time you failed anything was eighth grade P.E.”

That breaks her trance as she met his gaze again. “How did you…?”

“If it’s online, we can find it,” Oliver says. A smile haunts the corner of his sadly perfect lips, and she squeezes his hand on a reflex. He pulls her closer until they are both standing in front of the chest and she is less than a foot from him.

She has to tilt her head back to hold his gaze, but she does. She lets the silence hang between them, but can’t stop the sweep of her tongue across her lower lip or the instinctive gulp when his eyes seem to follow the movement and focus on her mouth.

“What is it you dislike about target practice?” he asks, bending his head slightly to lean in and inspire confidence.

This is textbook Seduction 101. She literally aced this class last month. And yet she can’t stop herself from leaning closer into him as she responds. “The end goal.”

“End goal?”

“Death.”

He blinks slowly and turns towards the box, but continues to hold her hand. “So no problem with the mechanics then?” A challenge runs through his tone.

“No.”

He opens the box to reveal an simple, wooden recurve bow staff, a coil of string, and a quiver of arrows fletched with white and black striped feathers.

“What do you have against technology?” Felicity blurts out.

Oliver chuckles, dropping her hand to pull out the bow with a look of honest affection, beginning to string it. “Didn’t you just claim to be a badass?”

“Yeah, but John seems to have left out the medieval weapons training.”

“Come on,” he gestures with a quick nod of his head towards the targets. A spark gleams in his eye that is positively boyish, and she finds she can’t resist, her feet following in his wake like a string of baby ducklings before she even has a conscious thought.

“Okay, what do I —“

She’s cut off in mid-sentence by the rapid flow of his torso and arms, muscles flexing and stretching under his thin linen shirt, a symphony of movement, as he knocks an arrow and lets it fly with less than a second of aim. She blinks, and he’s struck a bulls-eye.

Oliver turns to her and grins.

It’s about the sexiest thing she’s seen in… _ever_ , and she gulps again.

Then he gestures her forward, handing her the bow and turning her body so that he is _surrounding_ her on all sides: bow, hand on her forearm, fingers cradling her wrist, her back pressed against his chest, his other hand floating on top of her hipbone as he pulls her into position.

“Relax and breath normally,” he whispers, his breath stirring the tendrils of her hair at the nape of neck.

Sure. No problem. It is probably a very, very good thing that he hasn’t been training her personally. She wouldn’t have survived the first month.

Felicity closes her eyes and quiets her breathing with a superhuman force of will.

“Good,” Oliver encourages, almost ruining it. “Now, same principles as firearms: Good posture, weight balanced between your legs.” So help her, he is sliding his toe along the inner curve of her calf muscle.

A tremor passes through her thighs, but she stands strong and adjusts her stance, the flex of her fingers on the bow shaft her only conscious release of tension.

“Now nock the arrow and draw back.” An arrow appears before her and she slides it against the bow, surprised when the shaft lands snugly against the bow string. Felicity breaths as she draws back, worried at the tension on the string, but her training has been hard and she thinks she could hold this position for a few minutes if needed. That is if Oliver wasn’t trailing his hands over her leather-clad arms, checking the rotation of her elbow, adjusting the curve of her back by bringing her hips tight against his own.

She chances a glance back at him, from the corner of her eyes and finds his gaze on her face, too.

“Perfect,” he observes, which — _yeah_ — oh, right, pointy things. She closes her eyes and presses her lips together. Those words _did not_ come out of her mouth. She really was getting better at this spy stuff.

Instead she meets his gaze again with a little smolder of her own and asks, “And now?”

He presses his cheek to hers, sighting down the line, and she _feels_ his words as much as she hears them. “One motion. See the target. Breathe in. See the target. Draw. Release as you breathe out.”

He breathes with her, and she sees his previous shot in her mind’s-eye, mimicking his perfection, echoing the motion with her body.

The bow string is twanging by her ear before she recognizes that she’s fired.

“Bull’s Eye!” Oliver crows.

She’s hit the center of her target, miles better than her first time at the firing range. She can’t quite believe it, so, as Oliver steps back, she reaches down for a second arrow and nocks it again.

“Felicity —”

Before he’s finished her name, the bow-line is singing again and the second arrow lands an inch from the first. She lets her bow arm drop, about as stunned as Oliver’s expression.

“You’re a natural,” he says.

“Is that surprise I hear?” Because Felicity is certainly surprised at herself.

“Pride.”

Felicity feels heat flow across her cheeks, but she can’t help but grin back at Oliver and enjoy his approval. She wants more. “What’s next?”

Over the next hour, Oliver takes her through several stages of difficulty, from moving targets, to even shooting on the run. Which is _very_ hard, and she really asked for the third demonstration to observe the _finer points_ , even though a few of those points _may_ be the way his slacks stretch across his legs as he moves.

His shirt sleeves are rolled up to mid forearm, and the top three buttons are undone. Felicity is feeling a bit undone herself. And hot. From the exercise. So her leather coat is now hanging off the box, her shoes and socks kicked under the table, as she bounces on the balls of her bare feet, feeling the quiver thud against her butt as she prepares to make the first run.

“Ready,” she calls out.

Oliver triggers the tennis balls, falling from the ceiling, and she tracks the first fall, stepping forward. She doesn’t move as quickly as Oliver did, and the third and final ball ends up being hit on the third bounce and skittering across the floor with an arrow through it, instead of impaled on the wall like the other two, but she doesn’t care.

“Yes!” She raises her hands above her head, “Take that, President Snow!”

Oliver grins and shakes his head as he moves closer.

“Told you I was a badass.”

“Mm-hum.” Oliver gently takes the bow from her and continues to smile, and Felicity can’t help but beam back up at him. She knows she probably looks like a dope, but his eyes are just _so_ blue, and his face is more relaxed than she’s seen in all the time she’s known him, and he’s even more attractive. How is that even possible?

He tilts his head, and his smile dims a bit. “How is what possible?” he asks.

“Oh.” The word freezes on her lips as she scrambles to cover her outburst. “I mean, I’m not horrible in weapon’s practice, right? But —” she presses her hands together, to stop them from flailing, “— I know I’ve done better here than in the hologram chamber.”

Oliver nods. “Our standard weapons training is designed to simulate real world situations. It’s a different thing when you’re firing at something that’s alive or looks it.”

Felicity thinks back to crouching behind a crate, preparing to fire her paint gun at another operative. She knows the reason she’s never hit top marks. She wasn’t bothered by it before, but now she knows she has the skill. She could aim to wound and incapacitate. She wouldn’t need to kill if she hones her skill a bit more. And Oliver would look at her with that pride in his eyes again.

She nods. “Okay, how do you learn that?”

“Experience.” Oliver walks over to the wall panel and enters a short code. The lights lower except for a grid of lights: the hologram projectors. Three combatants flicker into existence, armed with semi-automatics.

Oliver spins her around, holding a sheet of adhesive disks that will tell the computer system — and the bad guys — where she is. “Aim at the middle of the body.” He peels off one sticker and slips it over her heart, his fingers brushing the skin above her sternum to force the seal. She hopes the system will attribute her raised heart rate to adrenaline. “Don’t get fancy,” Oliver continues. “Don’t aim at the head or limbs.” He presses a Glock into her hand, the same weight as her practice weapon. Then cups her shoulders and pins her with his stare. “And here’s the real trick. It seems illogical, I know; don’t look in your opponent’s eyes. That will stop you every time. You think for one minute about what you’re doing and you won’t do it. Stop being human; become something else.”

Felicity shudders as he steps away to input final commands. “Oliver? What should I become?”

Oliver doesn’t look at her. He’s staring off into the middle distance, and she has no idea what he might see. “A predator. No emotion. Just survival.” He shakes himself out of his trance and looks back at her, his lips quirking up at the corner, “And most important?”

She grins back and quips, “Don’t look into his eyes.” Felicity takes a classic Weaver stance, not that different from that of an archer, her eyes flickering over her opponents, when she realizes something.

“Wait! Oliver?”

“What?” He pulls his hand away from the control panel.

“Is this _the_ firearms evaluation? The one John said… Um, the one we’ve been training for?”

His face is blank, and his silence stretches for seconds before he agrees, “Yes.”

“Don’t you think I should, you know, practice with this gun a bit first?”

She hears his sigh across the five yard distance. “That’s part of the test, Felicity. Just stick to your training.” His voice lightens, “You’re a badass, remember?”

“Right. I just thought John would…”

“— Are you ready?” He sounds angry.

Here goes nothing then. “Ready.”

Felicity listens to the countdown and drops a split second after “one.” Shots ring out above her head as she runs in a crouch towards the outside man. She takes a second to track and fire on the man at the far right and feels satisfaction as he recoils back, hit right on center mass.

She looks up, right into the barrel of the first man and executes the move she’s been practicing every night since she found out about this make-or-break test. Felicity drops into a roll, letting go of her pistol as she rips the monitor tag from her chest and slides beneath the hologram’s legs. She hears a clatter behind her as she does the impossible and slaps the sticker onto the man’s leg. A beat of light pulses through the projection as the shots from the last man, trained on her heartbeat this whole time, refocus on the tagged hologram and blasts him.

Felicity searches the ground for her Glock, just in case things don’t go as planned, but even as she gets to her knees, the falling hologram instigates a final program and returns fire, striking the surprised last target.

“Mission executed,” the system reports before the hologram bodies wink out of existence.

“What did you do?” Oliver looms over her in the dark room, his voice full of menace, but she doesn’t care because it fucking _worked_.

“Kobayashi Maru!” She punches her fist in the air.

Oliver picks up the discarded monitor sticker with a frown. “No one gets through this test without being hit at least once. Dealing with the pain is part of the evaluation.”

Felicity shrugs as she climbs to her feet. “I found another way to deal with the pain.”

“Right.”

“Will I need to run it again?”

“No.” Oliver glances over his shoulder, as if looking through the walls and deeper into the Section complex. “It can only be run once.”

“Okay. That’s good, right?”

He meets her eyes, but shadows chase shadows within his face and she isn’t sure what they mean. “I really don’t know, Felicity.” He moves to the panel and returns the lights to normal. “Go to lunch.”

Hesitantly, she picks up her shoes and jacket, and climbs the circular stairs. “Oliver?”

“Just go.”

She leaves him there, standing in front of his worn box, contemplating his bow.

* * *

Oliver carefully sets down the delicate cup on its china saucer as he tries to read the expression of the woman sitting across from him. Moira has always reminded him of his mother with her poise, insight, and casual ruthlessness. These weekly review meetings do more to test his composure than months of undercover work with hardened criminals. Somehow he always felt as if he is disappointing her, even when she pours his tea to exactly his specifications and smiling politely at his observations.

“And what about Felicity?” she asks.

The cup clatters, but he sits back with the merest quirk of his brow. “What about her?”

“Her solution to the Firearms Simulation was flagged as abnormal, yet you haven’t brought it up.”

“There is nothing to talk about.”

“Then you’ll be recommending her cancelation?”

“No.” Oliver forms a fist with his right hand to cover the twitch of his fingers, but sees Moira’s gaze rest on his movement regardless.

She sips her tea. “I would like to understand your thought process.”

“Felicity shows excellent marksmanship in both this and other tests. Her… unorthodox approach to combat could be an asset in the field.”

“It could,” Moira allows. “It could also get her teammates killed if she is unreliable.”

“Felicity wouldn’t do that.” His voice is sharp even to his own ears.

Moira doesn’t bother to hide a second smile behind her teacup, and Oliver wants to growl and stalk from the room, but such a show of emotion would be dangerous when Section One’s chief psychologist is already watching him like a cat confronted with a big bowl of cream.

“Felicity’s team loyalty is rated only second to her systems skills. She would never do something to endanger a team mission.”

“And if she’s working solo? If the mission requires injury to an innocent?”

Oliver is silent.

“Her profile has taken on some unsettling behavior patterns.”

“Such as?”

“She has been combing through personnel files.”

“What?” Oliver straightens.

“John Diggle, Mary Enders, Brian O’Connel, even Curtis Holt, which is who sent up the flag. That one has more security redundancies than the Kremlin.” Moira sets down her cup and leans forward. “You know what they all have in common.”

He did. He’d been looking at them, too. “The Algiers mission.”

“Which one is the mole?”

Oliver shouldn’t be surprised. Moira and Operations are always a step ahead.

“O’Connel. I was going to recommend his isolation and debrief today.”

Moira manipulates a small computer tablet sitting next to her on the settee. “He’s overseeing the dance class right now.” She pauses, swiping three more times across the lit screen. “Oh, Felicity is there as well.”

Oliver knows that. He suspects Moira had known before their meeting.

“Felicity helped me identify the leak. I felt it would be a good real world test of her skills.”

“And you trusted her enough to authorize her infiltration of our systems, counter to the restrictions placed upon her?”

He nods.

“Interesting. You haven’t given her that much attention before now. Normally you are much more hands-on with the material.”

Not trusting his voice, Oliver shrugs and reaches casually for his cup.

“I assumed you didn’t see much potential in her.”

He takes a long drink, letting the herbal bitterness settle on his tongue before swallowing. “I felt she would be better motivated by John’s brand of camaraderie. I never thought she wasn’t Section material.”

“So you aren’t troubled by her squeamishness?”

“Some of our recruits are eager to kill for chocolate and a pat on the head; it doesn’t make them good operatives.”

“And there is no _personal_ reason why you’ve kept your distance?”

He holds her gaze now. This moment could prove fatal if mishandled.

“No.”

“Excellent.” She stands, smoothing her grey skirt. “Take in Brian now. I’ll conduct the interrogation.”

Oliver returns his half-full cup to the table and buttons his jacket.

* * *

After he leaves, Moira pours another cup of her favorite Earl Grey and adjourns to her desk, bringing up the cameras in the dance room on her larger screen. Several recruits circle and sashay across the dance floor, dressed in club-finery.

Brian O’Connel is dancing with a particularly busty operative and not paying much attention to the rest. As Oliver walks in with three strong men, including John Diggle, Moira takes careful note of the reactions around the room. Felicity is confused, then worried, while her partner falls into a military, at-ease stance. Brian doesn’t notice the change in the room until Oliver is a few feet behind him.

Brian’s eyes narrow a split second before he throws his dance partner at Oliver and attempts to flee. Oliver turns sideways, trusting John to catch the girl teetering in heels or perhaps not caring about her fate. He accelerates towards Brian, dodging a swing towards his head, and sweeps the traitor’s legs out from under him. The two other men rush forward to clamp onto Brian’s arms and wrestle him to a standing position.

Moira can’t hear what Brian says or what Oliver returns as he leans in, but the quick, smashing roundhouse that snaps back Brian’s head and makes a bloody mess of his nose sends a clear message to everyone in the room.

The others haul off Brian as Oliver pulls a handkerchief from his jacket and wipes blood off his fist. He says something, apparently directing the class to get back to practice from the way the recruits quickly begin to sway to the music.

Felicity is still watching Oliver as her partner attempts to pull her through the motions of a samba. She’s wearing the dress Moira picked out for her — never a sure thing with Felicity —and the smooth red fabric drapes lovingly from the curves of her hips to flirt about her toned thighs. Her shoulder and the small of her back are bare where her partner attempts to guide her, but she stumbles as Oliver approaches and the other man steps back. After a few words, he moves to Brian’s neglected partner, leaving Oliver and Felicity confronting each other while the rest swirl around them.

Oliver glances to the camera, angling his body so that his face is in shadow, and holds out his hand. Felicity falls into the frame of his arms with the graceful instinct of a seasoned operative. Her feet follow his without looking, her eyes trained on his as they begin to samba.

She asks him something, and he spins her, three times so that her skirt slaps his legs. He jerks her bodily against him and hisses something into her ear.

Fear flickers across her face. She is still rather poor at dissembling.

They continue to dance, circling the room. Another close whisper from Oliver brings a tight smile to Felicity’s face while their bodies move in tandem. Oliver’s focus is absolute on the little blonde in the red dress.

Moira sips her tea and settles back in her chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all your kind comments here and on Tumblr and twitter!
> 
> Chapter five will be up next Saturday with a whole lot of action and angst!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Felicity’s training window draws to a close, Oliver must make some hard choices to prove her value to Section One.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>   
> 

Operations stands at his window, watching operatives scurry across the wide floors of the Hub below, into briefings and trainings, and over the catwalks above. His black suit is pressed and spotless; his dark hair is a calculated tousle that brings a boyish cast to his hard face; his stance is still, but full of potential action. Oliver understood from the moment they met that this man would never be taken by surprise.

Even as Oliver treads with his habitual quiet step on the soft carpet of Operation’s perch — the one that makes Felicity jump when he ‘materializes’ behind her — he knows the older man is aware of him. Sure enough—

“You're late.”

“Training went long.” Memories of Felicity fill his mind’s eye: her eyes scrunched closed as she recites everything she’s seen in a 360 hologram projection down to the ‘suspicious man using a laptop from the 90’s.’ The past eleven months of training her have become a highlight in his rather grim life. He can admit that to himself, but Oliver smothers the smile on his lips before Operation turns and activates a screen on the panels that ring the room.

“Take a look at this.”

“Milo Armitage,” he identifies the still photograph of one of the top businessmen in the Northwest.

“He's brokering an alliance between multiple anti-Western terrorist groups. Everyone from the Middle East to the Far East.”

“That doesn't make sense. Half of them are enemies to each other.”

“But their biggest enemy is us.” Operation’s blue eyes sparkle coldly. “He's coming here to put an operation in place.”

“Do we know the when and where?”

“No, but we think there's an itinerary downloaded onto a thumb drive. John’s on it. He'll update you.”

Oliver nods, mentally building his team roster absently as he turns to leave.

“Oliver, about Felicity.”

He freezes. “What about her?”

“I've been watching her. She lacks discipline.”

“She needs a little more time.”

“It's been two years. That's our policy. We start making exceptions; We're no better than the CIA. Cancel her.”

Oliver’s body remains still, even his hands hanging loosely at his side, as his mind races to find the right words. “I think that would be a mistake.”

“It would be a mistake to become emotionally attached to the material.” Operation’s glare makes Oliver doubt every stolen smile that he thought he hid from the constant surveillance of Section. “Moira says you’ve grown quite close to this one.” His heart is starting to beat faster, and he knows he must leave soon or give himself away.

“It's nothing to do with that,” he sighs casually. “I think she could be a good operative. Her cyber skills alone...”

“Her cyber skills make her a threat!” Operation stands in the center of his power, Section pulsing behind him, thousands of operatives and millions of data points jumping at his command, yet anything he can’t control is still a threat.

Oliver knows this, but he can not let himself back down. His jaw hardens, his heart rate slows again, and he holds Operation’s gaze.

Operation stares at him, searching for weakness or uncertainty. Finally he blinks with a slight nod to his head. “If she fails, you fail.”

Oliver is dismissed; Operations returns to his screens and his contemplation of Section. Oliver feels a flush heating his neck and cheeks and runs his hand along the cool stone of the stairwell outside, searching for control.

He has a lot to plan.

* * *

Felicity’s body flows like liquid as she moves through combat drills, warming up before sparring. She swings her arms and legs faster and faster, mindful of her knees, elbows, heels, and palms. Warmth spreads through her limbs. Rapid punches pepper the air with each breath from her lungs.

She’s proud of how far she’s come in two years. She hates this place, but it has made her stronger.

Or maybe it has revealed a strength that was always there.

Regardless, she hopes that she’s strong enough for what lies ahead. She’s been strong enough for every challenge so far. Little throws her off balance now.

She feels eyes on her, a sixth sense Section has honed. Felicity delivers a spinning kick to an invisible opponent opening an opportunity to check her six. And catches Oliver’s eye across the practice mats.

She wobbles a small bit in her strike.

He waves her towards forward, so she gets permission from her instructor and drifts towards him with a slight bounce in her step. He is smiling, and she hopes it’s because of the sharpness of her movements and not that wobble at the end.

“Hi, Oliver.”

“Hi.”

She waits for him to continue, but he only continues to look at her with that grin, and it’s a little odd actually.

“Did we have another session? I was just getting started here.”

“No, no. Any plans tonight?”

Only if you counted reading in my bunk. What was he on about? “No…”

Oliver nods. “Have Moira get you a dress. We’re going out.”

“Out?” The word might as well be Greek to her. Dress? What is going on?

Oliver smiles again, as if pleased by her response, and backs away as he confirms, “Out. To dinner.”

Then he turns and walks away.

* * *

She’s sitting in a limo, riding through the city night with Oliver-in-a-tux stretched out next to her. He still hasn’t shaved recently, and his stubble is a fine dusting over the strong lines of his jaw. His jacket is unbuttoned, displaying a pair of black suspenders racing down to his narrow hips. His mesmerizing blue eyes are watching her fondly, probably never looking away. And this is all secondary to the fact that _she is out_!

Oliver led her through the Transport doors, up the elevator, and into the luxury car that is now taking them further and further away from Section One.

So for all of the amazing that is Oliver in formal wear, Felicity isn’t able to drag her gaze away from the window, hasn’t been since they left the garage. The lights of the city flash across the crystal glass, dancing yellow, silver, green, and red. No stars shine from between the tall buildings, but she catches sight of a crescent moon after a few blocks, and she almost sighs and can’t help but reach her hand up towards the glass and feel the cool night against her fingertips.

“Where are we?” It’s not Vegas, Boston, San Francisco, or Starling City. It could be New York, but she doubts it.

“Are we even in the U.S.?” But the buildings are too young and there are hardly any bike lanes. “Can’t be Europe, look at that street sign.” She’s doing that thing that she’s not supposed to do, filling the silence instead of waiting for information. But she’s also picking up on subtle clues, like she’s been taught, so she figures she gets a pass for the night.

Oliver’s fingers brush the bare skin of her shoulder, and she turns to him. He’s so much closer than she expected. Even though his hands have returned to his side, her arm still tingles from the ghost of his touch.

“I meant to tell you, you look beautiful.”

Wow. Okay. Felicity smooths down the soft fabric of the simple black dress with the daring decolletage, trailing her fingers through the soft fringe of the skirt hem.

“Thanks.”

She avoids explaining how much she and Moira had argued over the revealing dress. How she took her victory in the ruby color of her lips, the styling of her hair, and the lariat necklace with an arrow peg hanging down her frankly-a-bit-too-exposed cleavage.

Oliver keeps his eyes on her face, but she thinks he could be looking at her lips, and she catches herself before she moistens them. Oh, god, he’s leaning closer. Her eyelids flutter.

“We’re here,” he says as the car slows.

Dammit.

The door opens, held by a valet. Red carpet marks the way under an arching canopy and up a set of marble stairs. She swallows as she’s helped from the car on the dangerously high black stilettos. At least she’s not overdressed for the place.

Oliver takes her arm and leads her through a narrow hall and the candle-lit rooms of the intimate Italian restaurant. They are shown to a quaint table for two as her head spins. Felicity is not exactly sure what’s going on, but this is possibly the happiest she’s been in several years, and it’s almost too much to trust.

A trio of candles highlight Oliver’s unfair bone structure and bemused smile while they order drinks. A whole bottle of red wine is delivered for Oliver to pour, and she downs half of her generous glass before uttering another word.

Oliver is silent too, seeming content simply to watch her as she smiles back at him.

“Please say something,” she says.

“How are you feeling?”

“Nervous.”

Oliver huffs slightly. “Why?”

“Being here, with you.” She allows her eyes to roam the restaurant instead of looking at his intense gaze. “I just never thought… I never expected this. Not since Cooper —”

“Your ex-boyfriend?” Oliver shifts in his seat and face becomes impassive. It’s easier to look at him now.

“Yes. I loved him so much. I was so certain that he would never leave me like that. Two months from graduation, and I dropped out to find him.” Oliver is still watching her, across their _romantic dinner table_. “Oh, frack. This is a horrible topic of conversation!” She wads the napkin in her lap and leans forward earnestly. “Great date conversation, talking about ex-lovers.”

“It’s okay.” Oliver is smiling again as she wrinkles her nose at the sound of her final word. “I like hearing about your life.”

“It wasn’t much of one. I was just so consumed, for so long, on this _quest_ to solve the mystery, avenge the person who _sacrificed_ himself for me. I —”

Oliver is looking at her so intently now that there’s almost a _hunger_ there. “And now?” he asks.

“Now I wonder if I wasn’t putting my life on hold. Burying myself in Cooper’s grave.”

Oliver sips his wine, his gaze never leaving her face.

Felicity continues, “I’ve learned a lot these past two years. And it was hard. Computers, programing, —” she leans forward to whisper “— _hacking_ : that all comes easy to me. But it never really felt _earned_.” She’s making a mess of this. “I’m not making any sense.”

“You are.” His hand reaches hers across the table, his fingertips just brushing over her knuckles, but it is enough to give her the courage to continue.

“After the training, solving the problems without compromising myself, I feel like I can do anything. I feel… proud.”

“You should be proud, Felicity. You’re a survivor.”

He squeezes her wrist gently before reaching for something under the table. Oliver pulls out a large wooden box, wrapped with a gold ribbon and places it in front of her. About the size of a hardcover book, the box gleams in the candle light.

Felicity’s fingers flirt with the polished edge as she checks Oliver’s response. He nods. This is for her. Wow.

Tugging open the bow, Felicity closes her eyes and fights her grin as she flicks the latch at opens the lid. She wants to prolong the surprise, but peeks almost immediately… at the gun.

Nestled in custom groves, on a field of red velvet, lies a shining silver example of a brand new SIG Sauer P938 with a 7 round extension magazine. The rosewood grip has been lovingly polished to a sheen. She’s practiced with its like, even joked that it might be her favorite piece. An extra clip full of bullets rest below the weapon. She’s not sure what she expected, but this is certainly not it.

She forces a smile for Oliver, flicking her gaze up at him. Maybe this is how he does sweet. After all, she’s seen him shoot, and he seems to be very… passionate about it. This could be in honor of their first training session, after all. That’s… sweet. Kind of.

Then she notices the earbud in his ear, just before he starts talking.

“There are three men in a corner booth to my left. One of them has a thumb drive inside his briefcase. Get it.”

She pulls away, and he catches her hand again, leaning in the same as before except for the words coming out of his mouth.

“When you leave, don’t go through the front. There’s a window in the women’s restroom; use that. The car will wait in the alley for five minutes.”

He pats her hand and stands. “If you don’t mind, wait until I leave.”

And then he does.

* * *

For several seconds Felicity’s limbs refuse to work as she processes what just happened. Then she reaches an unsteady hand towards her glass of wine before stopping herself. More alcohol is probably a bad idea right now.

What the hell.

She downs the rest of the glass, seething at Oliver, at Section, at the men in the corner who are totally oblivious to her: just a young blonde woman a few tables over.

She could run. In nothing but a cocktail dress, nowhere to hide the gun, into a city she can’t identify, and pass the likely Section mission team. So, that would be a no.

She could beg for a phone and call — but the police are out for the same reasons, and her mother thinks she’s dead and would only be flagged by her call.

She knows nothing about these men except that they apparently don’t backup to the cloud, which certainly indicates terrorism or dirty dealings. Oliver has always been adamant in his conviction that Section is on the right side. Felicity isn’t sure there can ever be a right side to murder, a right time to brandish a gun in a public restaurant.

But she can’t reprogram this mission. The only way she can see out of this is through.

She surveys the diners as she reopens her “gift” and slips the spare clip into her bra. She uses the table to shield her movements and checks that the gun is clear and loaded. At the last moment, she casually wipes down the glasses at the table, unsure if this mission has a clean-up crew. She really, really hopes that it doesn’t need one.

With wide strides in her high heels, she crosses the four yards to the three men. A briefcase rests near the elbow of one man, so she holds the gun on him, arm straight, easily balancing her weight between her two legs.

“Give me the thumb drive!”

People start to scream.

The two other men scramble, the furthest one reaching deep into his coat. Gun. Felicity fires on instinct. The shot goes clean through his shoulder, rocking him backward and numbing his gun hand. Non-lethal wound given likely response times. As she processes this, as almost an afterthought, she is catching the near man’s thumb in a firm hold and tugging back. She’s not sure if it’s dislocated or only causing immense pain, but that’s just the distraction as she uses her pistol like a club across his temple. He collapses against the bleeding shoulder of his comrade, and Felicity brings the gun around to the solitary man again.

“Open the briefcase,” she orders.

His hands are up as he stares down her barrel. “My men will be here in seconds.” He doesn’t seem to be lying.

Felicity fires just over his head, shattering a decorative mirror which rains down sharp shards. The remaining customers scream as they rush out of the room. She strains for conviction as she trains the gun back between his cool grey eyes. “Open it _now_!”

He smiles slightly, as if he knows, knows that his life is in no danger or simply does not care. “You won’t get out of here alive.”

Frantic, Felicity fires at the briefcase lock. It pops open, and she rummages through with her left hand as she keeps the weapon on the calm man. If he makes a move, she can defend herself. But he is content to let his bodyguards close in.

Her fingers brush the memory stick as the first heavy-booted footsteps fall in the entry way. Felicity grabs the stick, and fires warning shots at the entrance to cover her retreat.

Fuck-me heels are horrible for running, and she mutters a prayer to her foremothers as she careens down the narrow corridor to the restrooms. Almost free.

A bullet hits the door seconds after she does, and she thanks god for the lock she’s able to click in place before racing to the tiny, stained-glass window at the end of the row of stalls. The room is empty, thanks to her her gunshots. God, she’s a terrorist. The news will say she’s a terrorist.

The window is two feet square if it’s anything and four feet off the ground, but she is ready to fly through it. Felicity scrambles to open the latch with her gun-hand and slips. Tries again, and pushes through, into a brick wall.

This is a joke.

She pushes, blinks, but still the solid, red bricks mock her with their realness.

Think, Felicity, think.

She slides her back down the wall and works off the straps of her killer shoes as she surveys the bathroom. If only she could MacGyver a bomb. Two bullets left in this clip. No storage space under the sinks for any chemicals. No time.

Footsteps fall on the other side of the hallway door and the lock will not hold a concerted attack. From this angle she spies a second door, stamped with a STAFF ONLY sign.

They are going to make an exception.

It’s not locked and leads to a service hallway. Better and better.

Felicity slides along the wall, further and further away from the bathroom door and towards the sounds of metal clangs and foreign voices. She’s found the kitchen.

Some stations seem abandoned but other cooks continue to prep food and those who turn to look at her seems surprised. She keeps the gun low, near her leg and registers the trailing rasp of a line of fringe that’s come undone, falling down her left calf. She feels moisture on her cheek and wipes away a silent tear and a mess of mascara. She keeps her head down.

Then three men burst through another door, swinging large assault rifles to bare on her across the stainless-steel countertops.

“Get out!” she screams at the workers, and fires off two shots into the doorway as she breaks into a sprint.

Chaos and clangs echo her heartbeat as she moves. The white shirt of a young man in front of her turns red as she ducks behind an industrial refrigerator. He falls with a wet smack that somehow breaks through the sound of bullets pinning her. Her hands eject the spent magazine and insert her final clip by rote.

How many can there be? She doesn’t look this time, just sticks out the gun and fires, angling to keep them down-room of her for a few more seconds as she looks for _anything_.

No window, no door, no trendy, explosive liquid nitrogen.

And then she sees it ten feet away, at the end of the kitchen: an old fashioned rubbish chute, no bigger than that bricked-off window. It’s her only chance.

She listens for the right moment, swears she can almost hear someone reloading, and rolls, staying low, into the corridor with her gun held firm in both hands. She wings two of the five men that she can see before she scuttles to relative safety behind the center island, just in front of the chute.

She’s not sure how many bullets are left. Then her brain processes what she saw before turning the corner. Two men weren’t shooting because one was on his knees while the other was loading a short-ranged rocket launcher that sat across the shoulder of the first.

That is really a rather insulting amount of over-kill. Or maybe it is a compliment. Either way, she can’t stay here.

So she tosses her gun and propels herself into the chute. Heat and light flare behind her, illuminating the way down the greasy metal tube as she falls head first into a dumpster.

Coffee grounds mat in her hair, and a dull ache starts to pound with her pulse where her right knee scraped past the ragged end of the chute. She probes the area and holds up fingers red with marinara or blood.

She’s alive.

Five minutes. They are only waiting five minutes.

Felicity pulls herself out of her fragrant bed, and spots a dark vehicle at the end of the alley. She tries to run, but it is more of a pathetic limp across the rough ground that chews at her nylons. The car door opens as she throws herself at it, and she is in Oliver’s arms.

They are warm and strong, and they quiver with life, and she _hates_ them.

She pushes back from him, throwing herself onto the rear facing seat.

“Drive,” he orders the driver, immune to the daggers in her eyes.

She continues to glare at him silently, since throwing herself dramatically from the car would only hurt herself.

“Did you get it?” Oh, _fuck him_ , is that all he can ask?

She digs into her ruined dress with a hand that only half wants to work and finally demands, “Why didn’t you tell me that this was a job?” She throws the thumb drive at him, pleased at his flinch when it bounces off his hard chest.

He picks up the device, addressing his response towards it. “We needed to see if you could improvise. An operative must be ready at a moment's notice —”

“Operative! You don’t want a person; you want a machine! I. Can’t. Do. That.” Her loud voice snaps at the end, fracturing into shards of betrayed hopes.

Oliver turns to look out the window.

“You just did.”

And, god help her, he was right.

* * *

Shock vibrates through Felicity’s sore body when she recognizes that the limo has not stopped in the Section garage. The city lights that have streaked past as she pressed her cheek to the cold window now resolve into one city street and a row of quiet apartment buildings set back from the curb to make way for strips of green and small beds of flowers. Oliver holds the door open and a hand outstretched.

“Please, Felicity, come with me.”

She’s too tired to resist, so she follows, shivering as she steps into the night air. Warmth in the form of Oliver’s dinner jacket settles over her shoulders, and resentment is slow in coming as he places a careful arm around her and guides her to one of the doors.

Four mailboxes, one without a name: her foggy brain continues to pick up details in expectation of debriefing. Oliver takes her up two flights of stairs and unlocks the door on the right.

The apartment is spartan, but lights soon flicker on to fill it with a homey glow. A galley kitchen off the front door shares a wide island with the main room. The furniture is modern, and she glimpses a small bedroom up a half-flight of stairs, behind a partition wall. French doors in the living room lead to some sort of roof patio. It’s nice.

She’s wandered into the center of the main room.

“Is this your apartment?”

“It’s yours,” Oliver answers.

She spins to see him leaning against the counter in his white shirtsleeves and black suspenders, his tie long discarded. Another wooden box rests next to him on the island. She recoils, as he opens it, only to spot papers and plastic.

“These are all in your names: passport, credit cards, driver's license,” he offers. “If anyone asks, you’re between jobs and taking some time to figure things out.” He approaches her as if unsure of her response. Which is _right_. Except she’s not sure of her response either as his hands fall on her shoulders.

She steps out of the jacket. “Taking time to figure things out. Yeah.”

“Your code name is Josephine.” He pauses, “Felicity…”

She waits, hating the way her name sounds in his voice. Hating it because she still loves it too much.

“I — we’ll try to give you a few weeks to settle in.”

 _We_ again. Ugh. Felicity turns from him, surveying the apartment as he lets himself out, leaving her keys on the counter.

“Goodbye, Oliver,” she manages just before the door falls shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew!
> 
> Typically I send my chapters to betas with only a short overall note. With this chapter I had to include a "I'm sorry!" when Oliver walks out on Felicity at the start of the mission. I hope his reasoning is clear, even if, like Felicity, you are currently hating him a little bit right now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity is called in for the next phase of the mission which puts her in a tense space with Oliver. Plus: two surprise guest cameos!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>   
> 

Felicity throws herself down on the deep cushions of her leather couch and surveys her handiwork with pride. The hall mirror was the final touch, and she deserves a bit of rest, red wine, and Netflix in her new home. Despite the numerous ways Section One abuses and mistreats its operatives, she has to admit that it is generous in its budget. In only three weeks, the semi-sterile apartment has been transformed into a cozy retreat, several steps up from the pseudo student housing aesthetic slump she was living before.

The living room walls now glow a soft peachy-pink — Sherwin Williams calls it “Stolen Kiss” — in the late afternoon light from the tall french windows. Colorful prints from local street artists and her favorite old movies brighten the darker spaces. The kitchen is full of Fiestaware plates and enough mugs of various genre referencing slogans to stave off the morning grumps until the caffeine kicks in. Her lofted bedroom is a calm retreat of cool blues, soft sheets, and a pair of the cutest fuzzy cat slippers she has ever seen.

A clothesline strung high across the kitchen island showcases her new obsessive collection of sunglasses. The drive to survive within the meat-grinding, paranoia-inducing hell of Section never gave her time to process the loss of her glasses before her _graduation_. After all, she spent much of high school and all of M.I.T. wearing contacts and viewing vision correction as a curse. If someone had walked up to her in the Boston Commons and offered to pay for laser corrective eye surgery — okay that is a horrible example because she would have run away from the crazy laser man as quickly as her Doc Martens could carry her, but if it had been her _own choice_ — she would have said “yes.” But she is her mother’s daughter and frugal, it was never a choice she could have made. Now that she is out of the day-to-day oppression of Section, Felicity resents the loss. It is another symbol of what Section has taken from her. So each time she goes out for food, or society, or technology, she returns with an least one pair of sunglasses. Various tints, frames, and degrees of mirrored reflection make the chain look like a rainbow of eye independence, able to coordinate with any outfit.

Felicity reaches for her tablet to activate another pet project. Her big screen TV is well mounted and accessible from her phone, computer, or iPad. She has so many new screens she’ll never be disconnected from the world again. Before she fires up Netflix to watch the next episode of _Doctor Who_ — soooo much to catch up on! — she runs her security sweep.

There had been only one a small camera, pointed at her door, when she first thought to check. That one little camera, almost innocent, almost for her own protection, still violates her sense of security and peace of mind. She holds her breath while the program cycles through frequencies and assesses irregularities in her security system circuits.

_Knock, knock, knock_

Felicity jumps, leg muscles tensing for action.

_’All systems normal,’_ reads her tablet.

Another series of knocks pepper the door, so Felicity sets the device on the coffee table and creeps towards the entry.

There should be no deliveries today. No one knows that she is here. The building’s security eliminates the chance of anything door-to-door.

As she passes the counter, almost as an afterthought, she picks up a hammer left over from hanging the hall mirror. She twists her wrist to get a feel for its weight.

Felicity peers through the spy-hole and is confronted with a mess of green leaves.

She pulls back in confusion, then looks again. The leaves move to reveal a woman with short brown hair who Felicity has never seen in her life.

Felicity cracks open the door, keeping the safety chain in place and angling her body to block the view of her apartment.

“Oh, you are here. Hi,” says the other woman as she juggles the ginormous plant, trying to work a hand free. “I’m Lyla.”

“Who sent you?”

“Who… _sent_ … Right. I’m from apartment D, but… I’ll just.”

She has just convinced her neighbor that she is certifiable. Fantastic. And excellent way to keep a low profile, so Section will be _thrilled_.

Felicity throws open the door and stretches out a hand. “Lyla? Hi! I’m Felicity!”

Okay, that was way too loud and high pitched. What is she, a chipmunk?

Lyla frees a hand from the plant and shakes Felicity’s, though she keeps an eye on the hammer in Felicity’s other hand.

“Oh, I was just hanging some things. On the wall. Want to come in?”

“Sure,” Lyla replies cautiously, handing over the plant before she enters. “Welcome to the building. It’s a coffee plant.”

“Oh my god, really? It’s like you _know_ me.”

The words are out of her mouth before she can think, and she blushes. Then Lyla chuckles, and it’s all okay as she follows Felicity into the apartment. Lyla looks around the main room while Felicity settles the potted plant on the kitchen island.

“You really like color.”

“I was in a sort of dark place for a while.” Literally. “I’m taking some time to get back to myself.”

Lyla nods. “I get that. I’ve had to make some career changes myself recently.”

“Yeah? Oh, do you want something to drink? Water, wine? I’ve got a nice red.”

“Mmm, yes. Wine, please, I just got off work.” Lyla lets her clatter through a drawer for the bottle opener before continuing, “I was in the army for ten years.”

Felicity manages to catch the wine glass before it slips out of her suddenly numb fingers. “Yeah?”

“I loved the action. Loved helping people while serving my country. Loved the expression it put on some of the good-ol-boy’s faces when I outperformed them.”

Felicity smiles at that, and at the obvious pride in Lyla’s words, even as her mind swirls at the fact that this woman has _training_ and maybe, just maybe, Felicity should have played the crazy neighbor card and just started adopting a lot of cats or something.

“But after a while, there were just a few too many missions that made me question the justice of what we were doing. I can’t really go into details, but I got out after my last tour and went into the private sector.”

“Private sector, right.” Felicity pours two large glasses and holds one out to Lyla. Maybe she can get her drunk enough to get a real feel for what Lyla might know.

Suddenly Lyla is laughing.

“What?” Felicity demands.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Um.” Felicity Smoak: master of the conversational arts.

“It’s okay. Most people don’t even think about how security works at big companies. It’s a good thing. We aren’t in the news because we do our jobs. ‘Private sector’ just means I help make it safe for America to kick butt on Wall Street as well as abroad. I’m not a cop; that would be the public sector.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t selling this. “Oh! I get it now. Yeah, I — I was in computers, in the, um private sector, too. Consulting.” Sort of. “So I was confused for a second.”

“It’s no problem,” Lyla rolls the wine in her glass and looks around as the conversation lags.

Felicity has forgotten how to speak to normal people. She has forgotten how to _speak_ at all. What are words?

“Doctor… who?” Lyla reads the Netflix screen.

“Oh, god. Yeah. British sci-fi. I was just about to order some pizza and veg out in front of the T.V. And now I sound super cool, so you’ll probably want to leave and never see me again.”

Lyla laughs again. “No, it actually does sound like a nice night in. I’m not much for sci-fi, but there are a couple movies I’ve been meaning to check out.”

“Do you want to stay?” Felicity holds up a menu from Pizza Stop down the street.

“No, that won’t work.”

“Oh, okay. I understand if you can’t stay. Maybe we could get dinner sometime this week?”

“I can stay, but I can’t do Pizza Stop.” She shakes her head in disgust at the pamphlet and takes out her cell phone. “Haven’t you had Luigi’s?”

Felicity shakes her head as she watches Lyla dial.

“You’ll thank me later.” Lyla turns slightly, looking out at the patio as she begins to place their order.

* * *

Two hours later, Felicity and Lyla are most of the way through _Iron Man 3_ with contented pizza babies incubating in their bellies. Lyla points out each inaccuracy of military procedure, while Felicity complains about each flaw in the computer technology. Somehow it is all hilarious. Possibly due to the empty bottle of wine, but mostly because this is the first time Felicity has really managed to _forget_ about a certain place and a certain someone and simply live in the moment.

She is warm and full of light, and everything is good.

The phone rings.

It takes two rings to find the remote and another to manage to pause the final battle over Lyla’s grumbling.

“Hello.”

“ _Josephine._ ” It is _his_ voice, and it sobers her more quickly than a cold shower.

She steps deeper into the kitchen area. “Yes.”

“Be at the staff entrance of the King George Hotel in one hour.” A click is followed by the dial tone.

* * *

John is loitering by the hotel loading dock, nursing a cigarette, when Felicity climbs out of her cab fifty minutes later. He tosses the smoking butt to the ground and stamps it while walking to the marked staff door just in time to open it for her.

“After you,” he says with a sweep of his hand.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

He grimaces. “Not the worst thing I’ve done for this job.”

“What are we doing now?”

He shushes her and nods as two men enter the passageway from a side door, heading towards the street.

“Hold up a bit. We’re almost there.”

Two more doors to the right, John pauses with his hand on the handle and smiles fully at the small security camera. Felicity takes her cue and gives the camera a little wave. The lock clicks from the inside, and John again holds the door for her.

“Such a gentleman,” she quips, fighting down the butterflies in her stomach as she moves into the cramped storage space, crowded with machinery, Section operatives, and the various cleaning supplies it can be assumed actually belong there. Three men, dressed as hotel staff, are clustered past a service cart, checking over their weapons.

Oliver stands near the back, bluetooth in ear, watching an array of six tiny monitors. When he looks up to find her watching him, he stills and his chin raises in a sort of half nod. She opens her mouth to say — god, there is just so much that she wants to say — but then a female operative with short spiked hair is pushing her into a corner.

“Take your top off.”

A maid’s uniform hangs from a rack of metal shelves, partially shielding her, and everyone else seems really focused on the arrival of somebody on the video displays.

“Come on,” the girl prods at increasing volume.

Any louder and Oliver will probably come over and see what the problem is. No, thank you. So Felicity turns towards the corner and pulls her t-shirt over her head, handing both it and her sunglasses over. The shirt is replaced with a slim weapon harness that feels odd strapped against her bare flesh.

“Specially made uniform,” the girl brags as she holds up the maid costume and wiggles three fingers though a hole in the side seam. “With this little Glock 27 against your side, you could clean the White House without the Secret Service even sneezing.”

“Great.” Felicity grabs the dress in a hurry to get something on over her pale pink bra.

It fits her perfectly, and the gun really does lie flat under her arm with nary a bulge. The young woman, who insists on being called Sin, makes Felicity draw the Glock a few times and gives her shoulder a punch when nothing gets tangled.

Suddenly, John is there holding a tube of red lipstick between his strong fingers.

“Are you going to do my makeup?”

“Trust me, Felicity, you don’t want to put this on your skin. It’s plastique.”

“As in a bomb?”

John grins as he demonstrates, twisting the red material up and out of the tube, then flipping a small cap off the base to display three buttons. “You jam it onto the surface, then arm it here.”

“Why would I need…” Felicity takes the tube and carefully returns the explosive to its shell and covers the detonator.

“It’s the perfect size for taking out a locked door.”

“We don’t have time to pick the lock.” Oliver steps next to John, and there are now officially too many people in her corner of this storage room.

“Do we have time to explain what I’m doing here?” she quips. Under her breath, she mutters, “ _this time_.”

Oliver tilts his head toward the monitors, and John and Sin move to supervise them. Things still feel crowded.

“We recently decrypted a thumb drive containing the itinerary of a known terrorist.”

He pauses meaningfully, and she has to roll her eyes a bit. Obviously this is a continuation of her last mission. Still a small knot of tension that she’s been carrying for almost a month, somewhere to the left of her sternum, finally relaxes when she realizes that horrible night really did have some purpose and that Oliver is trusting her to continue the job. Her shoulders settle slightly.

Oliver continues, “He is staying at this hotel, but he will leave the city soon. We need to extract him for interrogation.”

“Not kill him?”

Oliver looks pained. “No. Not kill him,” he agrees.

He turns to a guest service cart, stocked high with linens and toilet paper rolls, and reaches between two towels to pull out a small set of two syringes filled with clear liquid.

“He should be asleep when you enter. Inject him in the neck with one of these and secure the area. We’ll move in to extract him to the roof.”

“Why are there two?” She sweeps her fingers along the glass tubes resting in his hand and freezes when her palm brushes the tips of his fingers.

“He is with his mistress.”

She can’t stop looking at his eyes. Even in the dim light of the single fluorescent bulb, they seem to be saying… _something_ , and if she holds his gaze for just long enough she’ll be able to decode their message.

Then Sin breaks in with, “His evening detail just left the lobby. This is our window.” 

And Oliver has already tucked the needles back into the towels and pulled something from his vest before Felicity can blink. He holds up a pair of glasses with dark rectangular frames, more stylish but not dissimilar to the ones she was wearing when they met.

“Eyes and Ears: we’ll be in constant contact.” He gently slides them onto her face, stroking the wisps escaping her ponytail and tracing the curve of her ear. “Keep your head level. I’ll be right with you, Felicity.” He touches his bluetooth and smiles that half-fake smile that still makes her heart pick up its pace.

It’s really not fair.

But it makes her feel so much safer to know she’s not going in alone on this mission.

“I really like—” No, no, she will _not_ say the thing her tongue wants to say. _Having him inside her_? God! “— I mean, I’m ready.”

He nods and gestures everyone into the shadows so that she can step into the hall. It’s time to bag-and-tag a terrorist.

* * *

The service elevator doors slide shut behind her as she angles her body against the weight of her cart and pushes forward.

“That’s good, Felicity.” Oliver’s voice fills her ears. “I’m seeing what you see. Room 738 is on your right, just before the turn.”

No one is moving in the hall. No guards stand outside the door. So far, no surprises like before.

She squeezes the handle of the cart until her knuckles turn white, fighting the urge to talk to Oliver. She’s already tested the sound on the ride up. He can hear everything going on around her, but he doesn’t need to listen to her babble and it would look more than a little psychotic to anyone else.

One door down from 738, a man comes around the corner of the hall. She stops for a second before she recognizes the bellboy uniform of the hotel and presses on.

“Evenin’,” he chirps.

“Hi.” She can’t help but adjust her glasses, pressing them on one corner in a nervous tick she picked up in high school.

“New here?” He slows a bit.

She just nods and moves on, playing shy and refusing to make eye contact.

“Okay, see you around.” He keeps walking past.

“Stop at the door and pretend to check your supplies. Make sure he continues down the hall. We didn’t get a facial lock on him.”

“Mm-hum,” she says, doing just that. By the time she can casually glance back down the hall, the boy is rounding the second corner and starting to whistle. “I’m clear.”

“Go.”

Felicity uses the master key to get into the terrorist’s suite and wrestles with the door in a moment of silent desperation until the cart is inside. She sighs audibly when the door clicks closed.

“You’re doing great, Felicity.”

A warm flush runs over her cheeks as she checks the room and confirms it is empty. She places the cart in front of the hall door, just in case, and moves to the locked bedroom door.

“Does it ever freak anyone out, to have you in their ear like this?” she hisses.

“I can be quiet if I’m upsetting you.”

“No.” Oh, she said that too quickly. “It’s fine.”

She tries to depress the handle of the inner door, just in case. Locked. There is no key card access here, so she pulls the lipstick from her cleavage.

“Um,” Oliver clears his throat. “That is, they only make a single key for these executive suit doors.”

Felicity is half listening as she carefully applies the plastique. “Mm-hum.”

“They should be asleep after the wine the consumed and… other activities.”

She is kneeling down to get a closer look at the detonator, half wondering why Oliver is still talking, when she registers the crash of the cart in the entryway.

Spinning up and around, she just manages to get her body between the lock and the bellboy bursting into the room.

“Hey, Marta has this floor. Who are you?”

“Felicity —” Oliver warns.

“Yeah, Marta. I traded days with her. I’m new, just trying to get my hours up.” Felicity smiles winningly.

“Felicity, he’s one of them. Facial rec just came in.”

The man starts reaching into his jacket, and Felicity’s gun is out and pointed at his head before she registers the thought or Oliver can command it.

“What! Hey!” The guy has his hands in the air, a look of real terror on his face. “Please, please don’t.”

“Take him out, Felicity,” Oliver says as ice rushes through her veins.

The boy is shaking as he falls to his knees.

“Please, lady. I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job. Please don’t shoot me. Please.”

Felicity’s hand is shaking. This can’t be right.

“He’s lying. Shoot him, Felicity.”

But his face is so pathetic. So innocent. And he is looking straight at her. He almost flirted with her in the hall. And she just can’t…

Her gun hand drops a fraction.

“Felic—” But before Oliver can finish, the bellboy reaches deep in his jacket and pulls out a small plastic tab, depressing a button.

An alarm sounds from the inner room, and the crocodile tears of the boy fall off the man’s face as he stands and moves towards her.

Felicity defends herself reflexively, dropping the gun and catching the wrist of his grabbing hand with a sideways chop of her own.

“Abort, abort! We’re blown.” Oliver is yelling in her ear, and that sounds fantastic to her as all she can think is run, run, run.

The man tries to grab her again and pin her to the door, so she drops to a crouch and drives her shoulder into his solar plexus. He falls over her with a grunt, and she twists past him, sending a donkey kick into the back of his knee to speed his fall and boost her rush to the hall. She pauses to swing the cart in an arc that sends it crashing against a table and blocks his pursuit.

Then she is in the hall.

“Oliver,” she bites out.

Only silence on the comms, but footsteps sound around the corner the bellman originally came from. Backup.

As she flies down the corridor, she grabs at the master keycard on its string. Hiding in a room is a horrible idea. She’s seven stories up. But the service elevator is ten feet ahead.

“If anyone is there, service elevator.”

The roof. The extraction point is on the roof. Does the service elevator even go up there?

She turns into the alcove, not sure if the terrorists men have seen her, staking her life on the speed of an elevator that was probably built in the 70’s.

At least they aren’t shooting at her yet. That sadly makes this her best mission to date.

She jockeys the key into its slot with exaggerated slowness, knowing how persnickety these things can be, then kicks the wall for good measure.

Nothing. Nothing.

She focuses her attention on the elevator, wishing for superpowers. She kicks the wall again and starts jamming the card in and out of the slot as the footsteps reach the corner.

And then she’s grabbed from behind and pulled backward.

A strong hand wraps around her mouth, while a black-clad arm pins her elbows to her sides. She strikes at his instep, but he anticipates and moves beyond her reach, twisting her so that her front is pressed to the ice machine.

The footsteps rush past, and she tenses for the man to call out, but he does not. If anything, his grip loosens just a bit.

So she licks the inside of his palm, and he drops her with a gasp.

Oliver.

Felicity turns in his slack arms and finds his face a few inches above hers, and her eyes fix for a moment on a bead of sweat that is running down his neck into the hollow at the base of his throat. She licks her lips and tastes him there. His gaze slams into hers the second she glances up.

“You alright?” God his voice is deep right now.

She nods. Then Felicity registers the emergency stair door behind him, wants to kick herself for not seeing it before, until she stops and thinks… seven floors. He just ran up seven floors.

“You came for me?”

He doesn’t answer, just presses a bit closer to her — his thigh is literally between hers — and peers around the vending machine.

He whispers into her ear again, but this time she can feel the heat of his breath against her skin. “We still need to get out. The floor has at least four teams checking rooms.”

“The others?”

She can hear the smile in his voice. “On the roof. They’ll wait for two minutes; John won’t let them leave. But we have to get up there.”

Felicity nods, even though it brings her lips within a hairs breath of his collarbone.

“Stairs?”

“Too slow, and they’ll be sweeping them by now.”

“Then how?”

But she feels a pull at her side, and Oliver is moving across the corridor to the service elevator with her keycard. He places it in and presses a small button on the side of the card reader. He reaches out, and she instinctively puts her hand in his.

“Hold this in place.”

“Mmm,” she chokes down another double entendre.

Oliver moves to the elevator doors and jams his fingers between the center groove. She can see the strain in his forearm muscles, but he barely grunts as he forces the doors open… revealing a dark, forbidding drop into nothingness.

He clicks two safety locks on the door and holds out his hand again.

She is less automatic to go to him this time.

Then she sees a narrow cable hanging down the shaft. Oliver grips one side of the doorway and leans into the void, and Felicity throws herself around his waist to anchor him. He grins down at her face, pressed desperately against his midsection and holds up a locking carabiner at the end of the rope.

“A little present from John.”

The straps on his tactical vest take on new meanings as he hands the line to her and adjust the straps so that they wrap around his legs.

“That doesn’t look very comfortable,” she blurts out.

“Would you like to help?”

Oh, god. Felicity’s mouth hangs open.

“Too late,” he smirks, clipping the line to his center of gravity and stepping towards her with open arms.

“Wait.”

“Just hold onto me tight, Felicity.”

She whimpers for a whole host of reasons as he tugs on the rope and leans slightly over the abyss, his arms wrapped around her, pressing her to his side, every hard, dark, dangerous, provoking inch of him.

For a second they fall.

Then the rope catches and they swing like a pendulum. Her arms are wrapped around his torso, hands clasped at his neck while gravity eats at their feet. She kicks, trying to prevent the slipping that is sure to come, and one of her shoes falls off, dropping into the dark. It takes entirely too long to until a muffled poof marks its landing.

Oliver shifts, his lower hand guiding her legs, and now her legs are level with his hips and, well, it’s only _natural_ that her legs are wrapped around his hips, the skirt riding up. In the reshuffle, his other hand has come to grip her more tightly in the middle, and she can feel his bare hand against the bare skin of her back and how did _that_ happen. The slit for the gun. God. And it is so _hard_ to remember why she was mad at him in the first place.

She drops her head onto his shoulder. “Thank you for coming for me.”

One ear is pressed against him, the other still perked for sounds of pursuit, but she _thinks_ that she almost hears a word in response. It sounds a lot like “always.”

“Check the service elevator, idiots!” The voice echoes in the shaft, hard to pin down, but its intent is clear.

Felicity jerks against Oliver, when they begin to move. Upwards. Very fast.

A small rectangle of dim light grows larger. Two figures move, leaning into the shaft, and resolve to Sin and one of the other men. The ascent jerks to a stop, and Oliver grunts as the shock passes through the lines.

Shouts sound from below. Oliver pushes Felicity in the arms of the other man. She hears the distinctive click of a gun’s safety echo up the elevator shaft, and turns towards Oliver as he tries to push her away.

Bullets tear up the darkness, spitting flashes as they strike the metal sides. Felicity grabs Oliver’s hand and helps pull him to the relative safety of the roof. The whir of helicopter blades strobe the night air, but her first thought is for Oliver.

Then he’s next to her and they are running for the helipad. It seems forever away as the roof access door flies open, but Oliver pulls her and Sin along and the other operative reaches the copter.

Felicity can see John at the controls, shouting orders at the two other agents. They open fire on the terrorists pouring through the stairway door, covering the escape.

A few more feet to the open helicopter doors. Her muscles tense to jump as gunshots bite into the ground at her feet.

“Go, go, go,” Oliver shouts, and the helicopter begins to rise from the ground.

Felicity makes a last minute adjustment to her jump and springs for the copter.

Sin, Oliver, and Felicity collapse onto the helicopter floor as the John begins to bank away from the building and someone throws the door shut.

At first everyone is a little giddy at after the escape. They all laugh and grin at each other as they strap themselves into their seats.

It take a few minutes before Felicity recognizes that no one is meeting her gaze. Even Oliver is staring out the side window instead of looking at her or making contact with Section.

The mission rolls back on her, and she puts it together.

But she just couldn’t execute a man as he begged for his life on his knees. She couldn’t.

Maybe Section would believe her now.

But what would that mean?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! I'm over half way done with Part II, but may need to take a week or two hiatus before I start posting. I don't like to post unfinished WiPs because I don't want to let people down. :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A choice of life or death is finally made when Felicity and Oliver work to take down Milo Armitage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would again like to thank my betas [coffeewithsunshine](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeewithsunshine/pseuds/coffeewithsunshine) and [bushlaboo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bushlaboo/pseuds/bushlaboo) and my cheerleaders [Scu11y22](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Scu11y22/pseuds/Scu11y22) and [hellopoe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hellopoe/pseuds/hellopoe). Their enthusiasm and advice has been (and continues to be) invaluable! See the end for many more wordy author’s notes. :)
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

The reinforced steel door slams shut as Oliver gestures John forward.

Sin and the other three operatives, whom Felicity has taken to calling Larry, Moe, and Curly in her head, hardly look up from their positions at their various bunks or tables, but Felicity watches the discussion between John and Oliver closely.

They’ve been sequestered in this narrow, concrete room for at least seven hours, ever since they arrived back at Section. As happy as she is that there wasn’t a firing squad waiting for her at the entrance, Felicity finally grasps what Close Quarter Standby really means, and just about every element of the name is quickly driving her crazy.

She doesn’t think it’s normal to have John babysit them though. The lead master-at-arms of Section surely has something better to do than stand in the corner and watch four young operatives.

This is confirmed when Oliver leaves again, without a backwards glance, and John makes his way to the shallow shelf-with-cushion that is currently serving as her bunk.

“How you holding up, Felicity?”

She tilts her head and drawls out, “Fine.”

John flashes a tight smile at the two men cleaning guns at the center table nearby and slides closer. “Look, mission’s not over yet.”

“How is that comforting?”

“Because, Felicity,” and he waits until she is looking him dead in the eyes. “It means full debrief and _other_ protocols don’t go into effect until we catch this guy.”

“You mean until they ‘cancel’ me.”

He winces.

“Wait.” Her brain finally begins to work after hours of staring at the cement floor and reliving the botched mission at the hotel. “You’re saying that if we can still bring this guy in for interrogation, then I won’t be…” she glances at the others and whispers, “ _canceled_.”

“There’s a chance.”

She contemplates this for a moment.

“This isn’t standard protocol, is it?”

“What?” John sounds wary.

“After a failed mission —” Curly and Larry stiffen at the table. “— we should all immediately be debriefed and analyzed and another team assembled to try to meet the overall objective.”

“Maybe they have too many missions in the field right now.”

“Uh huh.”

“How do you know all this anyway?”

“I’m very clever,” she deadpans. “And I had a great teacher.” Felicity bumps John’s shoulder with her own, and he grins, bumping her back.

“We’re not Off Profile, are we?” This time she is sure to whisper and make certain that the fall of her hair obscures her lips from the rest of the room.

“No.” Certitude echoes in John’s voice. “There was, ah, a Contingency.”

“Contingency… in case he got away from the hotel?”

John won’t meet her gaze, and she knows the next thing out of his mouth will be a lie. “Yes, in case there was more security than expected.”

Oh, god. She was the contingency.

Felicity tries to make it all line up, but it’s hard. Because if her inability to kill was part of a mission contingency, then it would mean that Oliver had… anticipated. And, no. No.

John wraps his arm around her, and pulls her to his side.

“Don’t worry. Oliver already has another intersection point lined up. He just needs to draft a few more operatives.”

Because she’d screwed up. Because she couldn’t shoot an unarmed man. A “terrorist.”

Why did she somehow doubt that they were terrorists now?

The door creaks open again, and Oliver appears. He’s wearing professional calm like an icy, metal suit as he surveys the room, pausing only briefly on the sight of her and John.

“Mission is a go. Suit up.”

When he leaves this time, the door is left open like a gaping mouth.

* * *

“Just follow my lead and try not to screw up this time,” Moe says, all charm, as he kicks open the back door of the ambulance and reveals the scene Section has staged in the path of Armitage’s trip to the airport.

An overturned motorcycle lies at the end of a trail of metal debris, trapping Sin’s leather-clad leg as she whimpers pitifully. Two cop cars block the flow of traffic on this one-way street, adding their flashing lights to the ambulance’s. Several cars have already been stopped by the blockade, and Felicity catches sight of the target’s armor-plated, silver sedan as it slows to a stop before she focuses on the accident victim the way a real EMT would.

Moe has claimed some medical expertise in a previous life, so she does follow his lead, allowing him to check Sin’s head and vitals before they begin to disentangle her from the wrecked bike. All the while, she’s counting down in her head, waiting for John’s signal that he has blocked in Armitage with the “florist” van and Oliver’s signal from the ambulance driver’s seat that will start the assault.

The wind whips at her hair, tearing free strands from the careful french braid and driving home just how exposed they are in the middle of the road. She sweeps the scene while her partner stabilizes their “patient,” and sees the backdoor of the silver car pop open, and a man climb out.

This might be easier than they thought if they don’t have to breach the car itself.

A second man joins the first, and she recognizes him as the not-bellboy. She sucks air through her teeth as she turns around to hide her face. A desperate need to tell Oliver wells within her, pushing her tongue to the roof of her mouth, but they’ve been ordered to keep radio silence.

“Get the stretcher,” barks Moe.

A second later, John’s voice crackles in her ear. “In position.”

Felicity controls her breathing as she makes the short trip to the ambulance and opens the back. Sitting on top of the collapsible gurney is a EMT baseball cap. She looks up to find Oliver watching her from the gap in the front seats.

He winks, and she mouths, “Thank you.” They both sort of grin at each other as she covers her hair and face before carefully wrestling the first wheels out of the vehicle and onto the street.

She’s about halfway to the team, anticipating Oliver’s call to attack, when a man’s voice echoes between the tall buildings on either side.

“IT’S A TRAP!”

“Go, go, go!” Oliver screams.

Men jump out of the silver car and the black one beyond John’s van, armed with submachine guns and heavy pistols. Section operatives explode out of storefronts and the florist truck armed with the same and firing. Sin stops moaning and snatches the automatic from under the motorcycle, crouches behind it, and opens fire. The innocent bystanders scream and dive for cover.

Felicity overturns the gurney and pulls the weapons from beneath, tossing one to Moe. Even though he’s a jerk, he is on her team. She pops up to take three suppressive shots at the silver car, hoping to keep Armitage in the open, when she sees the man in question grab a passing woman and pull her in front of himself as a shield. Terrorist or not, he is a horrible human.

He pulls the woman towards a small, windowless door in the nearest building. His lackey follows with a second citizen in tow.

“John and team B, contain his men. Team A, pursue Armitage and apprehend.” Oliver’s voice pauses, then grows harder. “Alive does not mean unharmed,” he reminds them.

Felicity glances at Moe and Sin, her fellow members of team A.

“I’ll cover you to the door,” Sin shouts and makes good with a single shot to the head of one of Armitage’s men and a burst of covering fire for the rest.

Felicity nods at Moe and steps forward, keeping to a low crouch but moving fast. She takes up position behind the first car, then listens to the mother inside trying to keep her daughter calm while Moe snakes past her to a news stand.

After sending up a prayer that the mother and child remain unharmed, she trusts Moe and Sin to cover her and runs for the door through which Amitage disappeared.

She’s careful to hide her body as she opens the door, using her weight to prop it open when she inches forward and sweeps the interior with her gun. The stairwell is empty, heading up and down, and the two innocents are holding each other in a tangle of arms and tear-soaked sleeves at the landing.

They whimper at her gun, but calm when they see her uniform.

Moe blocks out the natural light when he fills the doorway and demands, “Which way did they go?”

The woman holds up a shaking hand, pointing down. Moe plunges forward, not waiting to see if Felicity follows. She tries not to let him get too far ahead, but keeps her weapon out as she descends into the dim yellow light of the sub-basement.

* * *

Oliver lets his crew load the last of the motorcycle into the back of the ambulance as he watches John walk down the driver’s side of the florist truck. The civilians have been cleared out, and the cop cars are gone.

“Good here,” John says over comms, indicating that all of Armitage’s security detail have been loaded into the holding cell in the back of his truck no matter their current level of health.

Oliver nods to John and waves Sin past the ambulance with the hot-wired silver sedan. Soon there will be no trace that Section was here, and that worries him because Felicity has been radio silent for two full minutes.

He slaps the back of the ambulance and signals the driver to move on, then walks towards John before finally breaking down and changing his frequency.

“Curtis.”

“Yo, Oliver. Mission successful?”

“I’m having problems with the comms.”

“No way, I don’t see anything on my end.”

“I can’t raise Michelson or Felicity.”

“Just a second.”

John is watching Oliver from behind the wheel, but he refuses to climb into the passenger seat.

Curtis returns. “We lost their signal a few minutes ago at your location. It was weakening before that. Could they be underground? There are some tunnels that connect up with the subway lines around there.”

“Underground. Yes. Thanks, Curtis.” Oliver yanks the earpiece out and tosses it onto the passenger seat. “Get the bodies out of here. I’m going after Armitage.”

“Like hell,” John says, tossing the keys to one of the operatives in the back. “I’m with you. Let’s go get her.”

“Him,” Oliver corrects, already moving towards the door.

“Mm-hum,” John returns, a few paces behind.

* * *

Two levels down into the parking structure, Felicity finally catches up with Moe as he fixes a flashlight to the barrel of his assault rifle. A quick sweep of the parking floor reveals a few cars and no terrorists.

“Oliver?”

“They don’t work down here.” She can practically hear the eye roll in Moe’s voice, but then she notices that he looks a little lost.

If Armitage gets away again, it’s not just her neck on the line.

Felicity moves out into the parking area and spots a door in a dark corner. A chain hangs from the bar lock, but she quickly realizes that it is separate from the frame and swinging slightly.

“Hey…” she whispers, calling Moe over.

He grunts, which is pretty much the nicest thing he’s said to her all day.

She takes a stance to cover him as he opens the door and enters a darker stairwell heading further down. Felicity gulps and pulls out her own flashlight, crossing her hands as she’s been trained.

When they reach the level ground again, the floor is damp and the walls are curved. If it smelled worse, it could be a sewer. Low light filters down through grated sky lights, flickering as large fans lazily whir. She tightens her slippery grip on her flashlight and listens closely, trying to discern other sounds besides Moe’s footsteps and her own.

A large archway gapes around a blind corner, and she lets Moe go first again.

Then he falls, the sound of scuffling echoing of the cement walls, and she almost thinks he’s tripped except the shadows don’t look right, so she faints left and low as she rounds the corner.

Moe is wrapped in the arms of a black man in a dark suit while Armitage stands a few feet away holding Moe’s rifle.

Felicity’s gun is immediately raised to Armitage’s head. She’d never miss a shot from here, and she almost wants to take it.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he chides, handing the rifle off to a second lackey who steps out of the shadows. “You do that and neither of you leave here alive.”

The larger black man clicks off the safety on his pistol, holding it straight to Moe’s neck. Killing Armitage to save her fellow operative will never work, and even as she pivots to aim for the man threatening his life, Felicity feels a tense desperation twisting within her chest. She’s trained for this shot too. Take out the hostage taker quick and clean before he knows you mean it.

But she doesn’t mean it, and he knows that, too.

He smirks as his partner takes the Glock from her limp fingers and grabs her arms, pinning them behind her back.

“Bring them back here,” Armitage commands, leading them into a small alcove.

Moe is pinned against a wall and seems to be having trouble breathing, but they don’t let Felicity go to him. Instead, Armitage walks closer to her, holding her own gun in his well-manicured hand and searching deep into her eyes. He rips the cap from her head. She tries to look away, and he uses the muzzle of the pistol to bring her face back to his.

“Now, who are you? I make it a point to know my enemies. I assumed this was ARGUS, but no. I’d remember your face.”

“Now you’re just getting creepy.”

He laughs, and steps closer so that she can smell the musk of his cologne. “I could use a body guard who looks like you. You could pose as my secretary.”

Felicity smiles. “Go. To. Hell.”

“Why not?” he says politely, and fires a shot from her gun into Moe’s kneecap.

Moe screams, and Armitage's goons chuckle.

“Who are you?” There’s a new tightness to the terrorist’s demand.

Felicity digs her fingernails into the palms of her hand to center herself and raises her chin in defiance.

“No?” He fires again, higher up, and Moe screams again.

Felicity can’t help but close her eyes at the sound. When she opens them, Moe has collapsed on the ground with dark stains spreading across both pant legs.

“Let’s try something new.”

The man holding her reverses his grip, and she feels the sharp edge of a tactical dagger pressed against her throat.

“ _Who do you work for!?_ ” Armitage screams.

Felicity can feel the man behind her change his grip on the knife and she’s not sure if it will plunge into her leg or down her neck. She preps herself to go limp when he strikes, hoping to use the last ditch self-defense training to break free.

Then she sees a shadow fall from a broken grate and into the tunnel. Before it lands, there is a flash and a bang, and the man holding her goes limp instead.

Felicity wastes no time, but dodges the second goon, turning her angular momentum into a spinning kick to the back of his neck. Armitage hesitates, and she strikes at his solar plexus with the heel of her hand, catching her gun as it falls from his hand.

By the time he catches his breath, she has the gun on him.

John rushes past, spinning the mission’s target against the wall and zip tying his hands.

Felicity turns to focus to the man who saved her.

Oliver still stands at a distance down the far tunnel, light and shadow dancing across his face as he watches her and asks, “Are you okay?”

Felicity raises her gun and sights down the tunnel. She registers the surprise in Oliver’s eyes as she pulls the trigger.

He takes a moment to realize that he hasn’t been hit.

But Felicity really doesn’t have time for Oliver right now. She moves past him, staring at the man behind Oliver as he wobbles on his feet and drops to the ground, his body taking a long time to register the bullet in his brain.

He’s wearing an overcoat and a grey suit now, instead of the bellboy uniform. His face is frozen in shock. The entry hole is small with a thin ribbon of dark red dripping out. A deeper red puddle halos his head.

Felicity saw his eyes when she pulled the trigger. He would have shot Oliver. He would have killed her. She’s never so viscerally understood the concept of kill or be killed.

And she still feels as if she’s bleeding internally.

* * *

Some time later she registers the blanket around her shoulders and the other operatives moving around. She lets herself be guided up the dark stairway and into the light of the noonday sun.

It makes her blink because she’s been in the dark for so long.

“Coffee or ice cream?”

“What?”

Oliver’s face appears in front of her. “Do you want coffee or ice cream?”

Her eyes narrow. “Both.”

He smiles and squeezes her shoulders where he’s holding her. Where he’s _been_ holding her. He helps her into the passenger seat of a sports car, and she starts to shake as sensations return to her. 

The blanket is scratchy at her cheek, but she snuggles deep anyhow. Her right hand — her gun hand — strokes the leather seat. Music is playing. Something classical, which surprises her, so she turns to watch Oliver in the driver’s seat.

He watches the road and lets her watch him. His hands glide along the steering wheel as he takes a turn, they find the stick shift without sight in perfect coordination with his feet, and they slide through his hair in an unpracticed moment that makes her think he doesn’t realize that she’s watching after all. He drives like he does pretty much everything: calmly, skillfully, and with singular focus. Images flicker through her mind, daydreams from simpler times that make her wonder…

But she knows that he is not always calm. She has seen his passion. She’s imagined it and enjoyed the imagining. She’s heard it today, in the way he’s asked if she was okay with a slight catch to his breath as if the answer mattered greatly to him. As cold as he seems, he is not dead inside.

And neither is she.

“Coffee would be fine.” Her voice holds a strange rasp to her ears, and she shakes her head slightly as if trying to get water out after a swim.

He casts a glance sideways before taking a corner a little fast, weaving in and out of the lunch-rush traffic.

“Oh, no: affogato or bust.”

She squints, waiting for her brain to reboot after the systems crash. “Huh?”

“Never had affogato?”

“Maybe I did, but I, er, _forgato_.”

The smallest huff of laughter bursts out from Oliver before he pulls alongside a parked SUV and executes a perfect parallel park.

“Is there _anything_ you can’t do?” Felicity asks as he hops out in front of a fancy Italian cafe. Which means she’s feeling more like herself, because she totally did _not_ plan to say that.

But Oliver just leans down and flashes a grin at her under the door frame. “Why don’t you get out of the car and find out.”

She leaves the blanket in the passenger seat and joins him on the curb. All around them, normal people go about their normal lives: complaining to friends on the phone, walking briskly to meetings, and gawking at the tall buildings and colorful signs. Life goes on.

She takes hold of Oliver’s offered hand and makes the choice to go on too.

END PART ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read, kudoed, commented, or advertised this story!
> 
> I’m especially excited by those of you who have mentioned a drive to rewatch _La Femme Nikita_ or _Nikitia_ , or seek them out for the first time. For those interested, this part of The Love Thieves story borrows heavily from the plot line of the _La Femme Nikita_ pilot episode (called “Nikita”), which in turn borrowed from the first half of the original French film, _La Femme Nikita_ , and the American remake, _Point of No Return_. Still, none of the above cast Emily Bett Rickards or Stephen Amell, so I like to feel that I’ve contributed something. ;)
> 
> The subtitle of this work is _amour de soi_ , a concept of a type of love described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and similar to the Greek concept of _philautia_. Both describe the love of self that humans feel that is responsible for our feeling of individual well-being unrelated to society’s perception of us. I leave it to you as a reader to decide who is the true “love thief” or “thieves” in this story, but I hope you’ll agree that Felicity’s concept of herself was certainly put to the test.
> 
> On a related note, the subtitle of Part Two will be Ludus. There will be fake marriage, bed-sharing, and kisses. ;)


End file.
